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^p STeannette JHartifi 



GALLANT LITTLE WALES. Sketches of its 

People, Places, and Customs Illustrated. 
THE END OF A SONG. Illustrated. 
THROUGH WELSH DOORWAYS. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



Gallant Little Wales 




THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN 



Gallant Little IVales 

Sketches of its Peopky Places 
and Customs 



BY JEANNETTE MARKS 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1912 



v.-^ 



^^ 



^'^^^ 



COPYRIGHT I912, BV JEANNKTTB MARKS 
ALU RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October iqi2 



CCU320901 



CALON WRTH GALON 



Preface 



As a guidebook this volume will be found to 
contain too few unpronounceable Welsh place- 
names to be adequate, but as an introduction to 
the North Welsh land, its customs, its village 
life, its little churches, its holiday possibilities, its 
history and associations, its folk-lore and romance, 
its music, its cottages and castles, Gallant 
Little Wales should be useful. It is my inten- 
tion to follow this book with a companion vol- 
ume on South Wales. 

I wish to express my debt to Mr. Henry Black- 
well, who has always been quick to lend me 
volumes from his priceless Welsh library and 
who went over some of my manuscript for me. 
I am under obligations also to Rev. Gwilym 
O. Griffith of Carnarvonshire, North Wales. 
Thanks, too, I owe to Miss Dorothy Foster for 
her work upon the map which appears as a sep- 
arate page in this volume. 

The English know where beauty and comfort, 
good care, and good Welsh mutton are to be had 
for a moderate tariff. But long before the Eng- 
lishman went for his vacations to these British 
[vii] 



Preface 

Alps and the American followed him, excursions 
were made into Wales. The Roman spent a sum- 
mer holiday or so both in North and South 
Wales, and left there his villas and his fortresses 
and his roads. The Roman, having set or fol- 
lowed a good example — and who shall say which 
it was? — and having with Roman certainty got 
what he wanted, departed, leaving the country 
open to other invaders who pillaged and plun- 
dered. Nor, since that time, has the country ever 
been without an invader. 

I, too, have gone my wonder-ways in Wales, 
plundering where I could. I, too, Celt and Celt 
again, have followed its beauty and felt a biting 
hunger for a land which, once loved, can never be 
forgotten. As did another Celt, William Morris, 
in his poems, so in prose this little book and I 
have wrought in an old garden, hoping to make 
" fresh flowers spring up from hoarded seed" and 
to bring back again — "back to folk weary" — 
some fragrance of old days and old deeds. Friend- 
liness, solitude, memories, beauty for the eye and 
beauty for the ear, — he who would have one or 
all of these, let him go and go again to gallant 
little Wales. Jeannette Marks. 

Attic Peace, May 13, 191 2. 



Contents 

I. Welsh Wales 3 

II. A Village in Eryri 17 

III. Hilltop Churches 30 

IV. Dr. Johnson's Tour of North 

Wales 59 

V. Welsh Folk-Lore 86 

VI. The City of the Prince of 

Wales 105 

VII. The Eisteddfod II7 

VIII. Cambrian Cottages 133 

IX. Castle and Abbeys in North 

Wales 155 

Appendix: Suggestions for Some 

Tours 177 



Illustrations 

The Ladies of Llangollen . . Frontispiece 
Conway Castle lo - 

From an old print. 

The Queen's Tower, Conway Castle . 24 

From an engraving by Cuitt, 1817. 

The Great Hall at Conway Castle . 32 

From an engraving by Cuitt. 

St. Winifred's Well, Holyhead . . 40 

From an engraving by Cuitt, 1 8 1 3 . 

The Eagle Tower of Carnarvon Castle 52 

From an engraving by Cuitt. 

Gateway of Carnarvon Castle . . . 66 "^ 

From an engraving by Cuitt. 

A View of Denbigh Castle .... 80 

From an engraving by Boydell, 1750. 

Ruthin Castle 92 

From an engraving by Buck, 1742. 

The Compleat Angler in Wales . .100 
[xi] 



Illustrations 



The Tower of Dolbadarn on Llanberis 
Lake 112 

Llanberis 124 

From an old print. 

Beaumaris 140 

From a proof before letters by Turner. 

A Welsh Waterfall near Penmaen- 
Mawr 148 

From an engraving by Boydell, 1750. 

Beddgelert 160 

From an old print. 

The Summit of Snowdon 172 

From an old print. 

Map Inside front cover ^\ 



Gallant Little TVales 



Gallant Little Wales 



Welsh Wales 

It is a vanished past that haunts the imagina- 
tion in Wales, so that forever after in thoughts 
of that country one goes spellbound. It is the 
beautiful present, the cry of the sheep upon the 
mountain-sides, the church bells ringing from 
their little bell-cots and sounding sweetly in 
valleys and on highland meadows, the very 
flowers of the roadsides, — foxglove, bluebell, 
heather, — that keep one lingering in Wales or 
draw one back to that land again. There are 
little churches of twelfth-century foundation, 
gray or washed white, — their golden glowing 
saffron wash of long ago unrenewed by the 
Welsh of to-day. There are little cottages, 
white or yellow or pink, with their bright door- 
sills of copper, their clean, shining flagstones, 
their latticed windows, and all the homely and 
dignified tranquillity within. There, towering 
above, are bare rock-strewn summits upon which 

[3] 



Gallant Little Wales 



the yew still stands, and, by its side, springing 
from the tuft of grass which the wind has not 
swept away, grows the white harebell ; the yew 
monument to a thousand years, the harebell a 
fragile thing of yesterday. And above these 
church-crowned hills are mountain summits, 
gray and craggy, stripped of everything verd- 
ant, places where there are "shapes that haunt 
thought's wilderness," and suggestions of an 
endless, unending journey. 

It was Bishop Baldwin, I think, accom- 
panied on his famous twelfth-century journey 
through Cambria by Gerald of Wales, who said, 
getting his breath with difficulty as he sur- 
mounted a Welsh hill, "The nightingale fol- 
lowed wise counsel and never came into Wales." 
Were this true, the reply might be that Wales 
has no need of nightingales, so many and so 
beautiful are the wind-played songs over the 
rocks, and so incomparably lovely are the voices 
of the Welsh people themselves. In any event, 
had the nightingales come into Wales, a plump 
one — as it seems Bishop Baldwin himself must 
have been — would never have remained long 
in the mountain fastnesses of northern Wales, 
— at least not in the neighbourhood of Snowdon 
[4] 



Welsh Wales 



or Nant Francon or Twll Ddu, — the "black 
hole " of Wales. Neither, if Bishop Baldwin 
ever climbed to a Welsh mountain-top, would 
this princely prelate have liked the views there. 
A comfortable, fat living in some Welsh com- 
munity like Valle Crucis Abbey, near the river 
Dee, by Llangollen, would probably have been 
far more to his liking. Even now these moun- 
tain inns are not of the accepted kind, but 
merely a cromlech over which the wind still 
plays its devil tunes, a cave or the ridgepole of 
a long sharp mountain crest, broken by crags 
down to the very edge of the sea. 

Wales is a land of mountains, of little alpine 
heights ranged on the western coast of Great 
Britain. Set between plain and sea, full of hill 
fastnesses, its turbulent history is partly ex- 
plained by the topography of Gwalia. Inde- 
pendence, lack of unity, — these words summar- 
ize most of the early history of Wales. To the 
different parts of Cambria, alpine Snowdonia, 
the pasture lands of Berwyn, the moorlands and 
vast coal-fields of the south, came two races : 
one short and dark, the Iberian ; the other tall 
and fair, the Celtic. These are still the two peo- 
ples of Wales. And after them came Rome; 

[5] 



Gallant Little Wales 



but Rome is gone, has vanished, except for her 
walls and foundations and roads, and these dark 
and fair races are still there, mingled, their racial 
traits still impregnable, still intact. 

When you add to what might be called the 
natural and inherent difficulties of the neces- 
sary mountain climbing in Wales, those of the 
Welsh language, you have a combination that 
is beyond words to describe. Even the veriest 
tyro a-visiting Wales will tell you that the lan- 
guage defies all description and the most con- 
scientious efforts to master it. 

One warm day we were making a melancholy 
progress up a mountain-side when steps passed 
swiftly and a voice said in Welsh, "Stepping 
upwards^" The young man, an itinerant Welsh 
minister, was travelling in the same direction 
with us and it did not seem polite to say "Good- 
bye," although I could think of no other Welsh 
words. Finally two inept ones came to me, 
"Da iawn" (very good), and I spoke them. 
But then, not content to let well enough alone, 
something more had to be said and I kept on 
repeating those words like a parrot. The Welsh- 
man looked around doubtfully, as if he wondered 
what the " Very good " was all about, and I 
[6] 



Welsh Wales 



heard him murmuring to himself and saw him 
hasten upwards a little faster. 

" Say something else," my companion whis- 
pered. 

" I am going to if you will just give me time," 
I snapped back. 

But I did n't say anything else; I couldn't, 
for not another thing would come. If any one 
feels disposed to criticize an alien because he is 
unable to speak Welsh, then let him go test its 
difficulties for himself, its long words, its savage 
consonants, its poor little vowels lost like some 
bleating lamb upon rocky mountain-sides. You 
just get it satisfactorily settled in your own 
mind that " Dad " means father, — very natural 
and proper, — when suddenly you discover that 
'^ Tad " and " Nhad " and " Thad " also mean 
father and are one and the same word. With 
mother or "Mam" you suffer a similar though 
not the same fate. To begin with, the Cymric 
alphabet differs from ours: it consists of thirty- 
one letters, some of which, " mh," " ch," " dd," 
*'fF," "ng," "ngh," "11," "nh," "ph," "rh," "th," 
never occur in the English alphabet as letters 
per se. Your honest grammarian will tell you 
flatly that in the case of "11" there is no sound 

[7] 



Gallant Little Wales 



in any language corresponding to it. Most like 
it are the Spanish " 11 " and the Italian " gl." 
Then what to do? 'Do as you would have to 
do in rope skipping: watch the rope, run and 
jump in if you can. The " c " is hard in Welsh, 
never soft like " c " in " city " ; "ch " is like the 
guttural German "ch"; the "dd" sometimes 
like " eth " ; "f " like " v " ; " ff " like " f " ; " g" 
is never soft as in "giant," but like "g" in "get"; 
" i," both long and short, as " i " in " pin " and 
" ee " in " fleet " ; " o " is short like " o " in " got " 
or long like " o " in " note " ; " p " as in English; 
" s " is like " s " in " sin " ; " u " is sometimes 
like " i " and sometimes not ; the " w " is like 
"u"; "y" has two sounds, first like "u" in 
" fur," second like the Welsh " u." A few words 
will illustrate Welsh pronunciation. " Cymru " 
is pronounced, as nearly as one can suggest its 
pronunciation, as if spelled " Kumree " ; " Gwa- 
lia" as if "Gooalia"; "Mawddwy" as if "Mau- 
thooy " ; " Wnion " as if " Oonion " ; " Pwllheli " 
as if " Pooltheli " ; "Dolgelley " as if " Dolgeth- 
ley." 

I have had some experiences with my "small" 
Welsh which I would not exchange for those 
of " big " German in the past, or of any other 
[8] 



IFelsh Wales 



language in which I have been trained to read 
or speak. I remember one experience that hap- 
pened when we were in search of a certain little 
church of ancient foundation, set upon a hill- 
top. In Wales there are many of these little 
churches on the hilltops, like Llanrychwyn and 
Llangelynin, and also little churches by the sea, 
like Llandanwg, almost at the foot of Harlech. 
Within their mediaeval lychgates and high 
stone walls the dead are crowded close in their 
last sleep. Sweet places are those old churches, 
with the yew standing sentinel near them, 
and about them the shelter of the valley or 
the wide sweep of the hilltop view. This time 
it was a hilltop church for which we were 
searching. Again it was "Da iawn" which 
graced the conversation, but in how different 
a manner ! 

; We were in need of tea, and at the cottage 
next to the church, the only cottage upon that 
summit, I rapped with my stick and said to the 
old woman who came, "Dyma le da i gael te" 
(this is a good place to have tea). 

" Yiss," was her reply, her face brightening; 
" Te *? " 

" Yes," said I ; " tea and bread-and-butter." 

[9] 



Gallant Little Wales 



" Jam % " asked she, remembering what I had 
forgotten. 

" Yes," I answered. 

She spread the cover in the place on the turf 
to which we pointed and smiled brightly at me, 
as if she, too, appreciated the beauty of that 
place with its wide mountain and valley land- 
scape, the trustful sheep browsing near me, and 
down at our feet the magnificent pile of Har- 
lech Castle looking across the wide flat marsh 
at its feet and over the sea toward the palace of 
King Mark. 

" Da iawn " (very good), said I emphatically. 

And her answering smile told me that we 
understood each other, even if we could not 
speak each other's language very well. 

Changeling Welsh words are begot of elves 
and fairies. Even as those words are full of 
poetry, of romance, of a wild emotionalism, — 
the " Scream of the Celt " it has been called, 
but in Wales it is a subdued scream, — so, still, 
are the superstitions about fairies and elves liv- 
ing among these Welsh hills and valleys. Child- 
ish tales they may seem to you, if you are for- 
tunate enough to be told anything about them 
at all by the Welsh peasants, who are both sus- 
[ lo] 




H .« 









Welsh Wales 



picious and shy of the " foreigner." The tales 
one may hear even now in Wales are full of a 
haunting race life. The Welsh speak of the 
fairies as the " little folk " or the " fair folk " or 
" family " — " y Tylwyth Teg." And well do 
these little creatures deserve the name, for they 
are friendly in Wales. Ghosts there are, too, and 
the death portents, the old hag of the mist and 
others that groan or moan or sing or stamp with 
their feet. And there are " Corpse Candles " and 
"Goblin Funerals." Shakespeare knew a deal 
about Welsh folk-lore, but where he got it from 
no one has yet discovered. With Shakespeare 
" mab " meant a little thing, just as in any Welsh 
village to-day " mabcath " means a kitten. 

No matter where I have been I have found 
the Welsh conscious of the beauty and signi- 
ficance of their land, its legendary lore, its his- 
tory, its marvellous natural attraction. They 
have always been eager to give me information 
about some landmark, some incident about which 
I might be inquiring. Over their shop counters, 
across the doorsills of the humblest of Welsh 
cottages, by some kitchen fire where the brass 
tea-kettle sang and glowed in the subdued light 
of the ingle, they have poured forth titles of 



Gallant Little Wales 



books and data, — things for which I was search- 
ing, or needed to know. One old man, eighty- 
six years old and bedridden, held my hand in 
an eager, childish clasp, while he tried to tell me 
something about a church, the poor tired mind 
working like a rundown clock, the half-sightless 
eyes looking at me in petition to help him re- 
call the days that had slipped so far away. He 
asked me about friends of his, — people who 
had died before I had thought of being born. 
He corrected my few words of Welsh, a ghost 
of a smile about the old mouth, but he could 
not recollect what I wanted to know. Without 
the information I was seeking, I went away 
saying " Nos da " to him, which was, indeed, 
good night. 

When Dr. Samuel Johnson made his mem- 
orable tour of Wales, he wrote, " Wales is so 
little different from England that it offers no- 
thing to the speculations of the traveller." He 
seemed wholly oblivious to the strong racial 
difference between Welsh and English, which 
alters not only the visage of the people, but 
also the visage of the very country. He was so 
indifferent to the grandeur of Snowdon scenery 
that, going around the base of that mountain of 

[ 12] 



Welsh Wales 



eagles in a chaise, he spent his time keeping 
account of the number of sheep for ^'Miss 
Thrale," — his Httle favourite " Queenie." I do 
not believe that Johnson's disgust would have 
been the least appeased by knowing that in the 
years to come other great people were to go and 
go again to Wales, as to a beloved lap of rest : 
Wordsworth, Shelley, Kingsley, Froude, New- 
man, Huxley, Tyndall, Tennyson, Arnold, Tom 
Taylor, John Bright, Carmen Sylva, and many 
another. The good Doctor scorned Welsh riv- 
ers, called them brooks and offered to jump 
over them. He would have despised such a cot- 
tage kitchen as I have lingered in many a time 
impressed by its beautiful and dignified sim- 
plicity. Sweet places are these old kitchens, hos- 
pitable, warm, cheerful. Sunlight or firelight, 
one or the other, you may have always in them. 
Bright they are with fuchsias and little gleam- 
ing leaded window-panes, with polished oak 
and polished brass and copper, with the shining 
face of a grandfather clock, with pewter, with 
lustre pitchers and creamers, with gleaming pots 
and kettles, and the salt glistening on bacons 
and hams hanging from the blackened oak raft* 
ers. Gay are they, too, with the life and laughter 

[ 13 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



of children, with the good cheer of contented 
older people, with the purr of the house cat and 
the bubbling of the tea-kettle. More homelike, 
more motherly, more charming old kitchens, it 
has never been my good fortune to see. 

There was only one thing in Wales which 
profoundly satisfied the great Doctor and that 
was its castles, Harlech and Conway, and Car- 
narvon Castle most of all. Almost every Welsh 
town has its historical traditions of importance, 
but Carnarvon, the city of the Prince of Wales, 
even more than others. There Elen, the Great 
Welsh roadmaker, was sought and won by the 
Emperor Maximus. Of that little city, once 
the Roman city of Segontium, there is a descrip- 
tion in the " Mabinogion," the classic of Welsh 
literature and one of the classics of the world. 
The Roman Emperor saw in his dream but what 
we see now, a fair and mighty castle, rocks, pre- 
cipices, mountains of great height. The Prince 
of Wales was born, according to legend, in Car- 
narvon Castle, and there investiture ceremon- 
ies are still held. But veracious history assures 
us that he was born in the town, outside the 
castle of which he himself had built the very 
tower where he was supposed to have been born. 

[ 14] 



Welsh Wales 



Tumultuous, confused, legendary is Welsh his- 
tory, full of the more or less mythical deeds 
of their great King Arthur, their brave Prince 
Llewelyn, the fate that overtook the hopes and 
ideals of this prince, their last fight for inde- 
pendence and their loss of it ; their submission 
to the yoke of conquerors and the history of 
English princes v^ho were put over them. It is 
a wild, sad, eventful history whose sorrows and 
tragedies seem only to have bitten all that is 
most Cymric in Welsh Wales deeper into 
Welsh lives and hearts, so that to-day, despite 
all that conqueror or civilization can do, their 
language, their lives, are still separate. 

And the Welsh Eisteddfod, a festival of 
song and poetry, is a revelation of the unique 
national Welsh spirit. From every hamlet in 
Wales, even those reached only by Welsh 
ponies, visitors travel on foot or by train to 
this feast of song and to witness the Gorsedd, a 
druidical ceremony old as the Eye of Light 
itself " Gallant little Wales " shows itself to 
the least and last participant in the Eisteddfod 
as Welsh Wales. Educationally this Eistedd- 
fod ceremony is of great value to Wales, demo- 
cratic, representative, instructive ; and nowhere 

c 15] 



Gallant Little Wales 



could the fact that Welsh educational ideals 
are quite different from those of England — 
popular and progressive, with something of the 
so-called American spirit in them — reveal it- 
self more completely than in this assembly of 
the people. Wales is essentially a democracy 
— a democracy of song, a democracy of poetry, 
a democracy of education and religion, and 
the Eisteddfod is the popular university of the 
people. To comprehend what is deepest and 
best in Welsh Wales one must go to the Eis- 
teddfod and hear the Welsh, sensitive, capable 
of the " Hwyl," imaginative, passionate, fer- 
vidly patriotic, sing, — 

HEN WLAD FY NHADAU (OLD LAND OF 
MY FATHERS) 

" Old mountain-built Cymru, the bard's Paradise, 
The farm in the cwm, the wild crag in the skies, 
The river that winds, have entwined tenderly 
With a love spell my spirit in me. 

Chorus : Land, Land, 

Too fondly I love thee, dear Land, 
Till warring sea and shore be gone. 
Pray God let the old tongue live on." 



II 

A Village in Eryri 

** Curates mind the parish, 
Sweepers mind the court, 
We *11 away to Snowdon, 
For our ten days' sport." 

Kingsley's Letter to Tom Hughes. 

At the centre of a wide meadow with valleys 
running in towards the centre from east and 
south and west lies a little village of North 
Wales. All the cottages are gray, gray as the 
stones of St. John's, but they are of the crisp, 
compact gray of slate, and not the crumbling, 
fretted stone of Oxford. Occasionally some cot- 
tage nestling to the craggy side of one of the 
valley roads is whitewashed with white or pink, 
or fitted so neatly into the jutting rocks of the 
mountain-side that only the humble facade, a 
screen of blooming roses, is visible. White- 
wash, roses, gleam of copper doorsills, running 
water, flash gaily in the midst of the gray of 
Beddgelert. Above the houses is the blue road- 
way of sky walled in by craggy mountain-sum- 
mits, the sides of the mountains carpeted with 

[ 17] 



Gallant Little Wales 



myriad tufts of heather, lavender or purple or 
pink, and in autumn with the vivid yellow of 
the prickly gorse. Bees desert tiny gardens of 
well-hedged roses for this wide principality 
of bracken and heather, where around tufted 
blossoms they hum to the tossing of some 
stream casting itself down the hills. Up the 
rocks clamber ivy and sheep ; about the moist 
edges of the pools and over the cushions of 
damp moss, black and brown watered-silk 
snails measure leisurely in well-fed content; 
and in little terraced glens of thick sod and 
along the roadways grow bluebells and colum- 
bine and foxglove and elfin white birches. But 
above these troops of upland bluebells and slen- 
der, swaying birches hang rocks, wild, rugged, 
whipped bare even of heather. And from the 
rough spine of Craig-y-Llan stretches away 
towards Snowdon and Pen-y-Pass, a wilderness 
of naked rocks, weird, jagged, shining gray and 
black in utter desolation. 

At the meeting of the Colwyn and Gwynen 
rivers, with the hollow sound of rushing water 
in its village lanes and the tinkling of sheep 
bells scattering from the overhanging hills, the 
meadow strips lie beside the valley roads, deep 
[i8] 



A Village in Eryri 



green with abundant grass or yellow with grain. 
Life, however, has been strenuous in this village 
of fourscore mountain huts, and many fathers 
and sons have had to labour to clear the grassy 
fields. For these honest, independent, thrifty 
Welshmen, slate and sheep are the chief means 
of support. The rivers yield, too, a fair quantity 
of salmon as pink as some of the mountain 
huts, salmon weighing from one to eighteen 
pounds. In a flood, although the torrent some- 
times reduces the number of inhabitants, the 
catch of salmon is greater, and the villagers face 
the delicate task of balancing an all- wise but 
unscrupulous Providence. 

The way to a Welshman's heart, nevertheless, 
is not through his stomach; the Welsh think 
but little of what they eat. Before English tour- 
ists came to the village the inns of the place, 
Ty Ucha — now the Saracen's Head — and Ty 
Isaf, provided a bill of fare consisting of oat and 
barley bread, ale, porter, and eggs. English and 
Americans, unlike the Welsh, do not go lightly 
on a holiday without consideration of what there 
will be to eat. And our lodging-table, set by as 
kindly and generous a hostess as three wanderers 
ever found, bore slender chickens whose pro- 

[ 19] 



Gallant Little Wales 



portions suggested mountain climbing, mutton 
tender as the ivy the poor sheep had been nib- 
bling, salmon trout fresh as the stream pouring 
by the corner of our cottage, Glan Afon, pound- 
cake filled with plums, and tawny mountain 
honey. And, too, there were vegetables for whose 
mere names we felt a careless indifference. Even 
the loaf of bread Baucis and Philemon set be- 
fore their wanderers was no better, I am certain, 
than the bread of Beddgelert, light, sweet, with 
crackly golden-brown crust. Often have we done 
nothing but watch — and joy enough it was — 
the mammoth loaves coming home from the 
village bakery across the village bridge, little 
children staggering under them, small boys 
bearing them jauntily, mothers grasping them 
firmly under one arm, a baby tucked away under 
the other. 

At the inns, of which the Royal Goat is most 
pretentious, — it has a piano, — there is much 
quiet holiday life led by quiet holiday people. 
The simple folk who come to stay are for the 
most part the Welsh people themselves, for 
whom Beddgelert is in the nature of a shrine, a 
place canonized by the brave deed of one of 
their own Welsh greyhounds. Prince Llewelyn's 



A Village in Eryri 



Gelert. The visitors who travel through the 
valley during the holiday month of August are 
English and Welsh tourists on the coaches driv- 
ing over Llanberis Pass, said to be the highest 
coach drive in the world, and going to Car- 
narvon, the ancient Roman city of Segontium, 
fourteen miles distant from Beddgelert. 

In the last hundred years the village has har- 
boured many a distinguished man who, giving 
thanks for his undiscovered seclusion, has come 
and gone unknown. Wordsworth came there 
with his friend, Robert Jones; Shelley, living at 
Tan yr Allt, a few miles out of Beddgelert, must 
often have passed through its lanes, his ragged 
brown hair whipped by the valley wind, his 
great eyes blue as the roadway of sky overhead ; 
Kingsley, with a quick smile for the jolly little 
urchins perched venturesomely on the sharp 
slate coping of the bridge, Frederic Temple, 
Derwent Coleridge, J. A. Froude, Professor F. 
W. Newman, Huxley, Tyndall, all found holi- 
day rest in this quiet meadow sheltered by its 
rampart of mountains. Gladstone came there, 
too. A village cow with an eye for distinction 
endeavoured to hook the Prime Minister and 
had afterwards the satisfaction of being sold for 

[21 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



a large sum of money. There also in the valley- 
was born " Golden Rule" Jones, of Toledo fame, 
a good man, and but one of many good men 
who have gone forth from this fastness of peace 
to dream ever afterwards of a return to its gray 
houses, its streams, its hills and heather and 
wilderness of crags. 

Ty Isaf and Ty Ucha are the oldest inns of 
the village. Ty Isaf is at the entrance of the 
lane leading to the church, and it was there, not 
so many years ago, that the minister was still 
expected to drink a cup or two of ale before 
entering the pulpit or fail in due prelusive 
inspiration. At Ty Isaf was kept the Large 
Pint of Beddgelert (" Hen Beint Mawr Bedd 
Gelert "), a pewter mug which held two quarts 
of old beer. Any man who could drink this 
quantity at a breath might charge the amount 
to the lord of the manor ; if he failed, he paid 
for it himself But so often was the heroic deed 
accomplished by capacious Welshmen that it 
is recorded the tenants paid but half their rent 
in money. It would be interesting to know for 
how many goblins, fairies, " Lantern Jacks," 
flickering " Candles of the Dead," Hen Beint 
Mawr was responsible ! Now over every little 

[22] 



A Village in Eryri 



inn is the sign " Temperance," for Welsh reviv- 
als have played havoc with these noble drink- 
ing-feats. One signboard, I can never pass with- 
out a smile, has gone so far as rather to insist 
upon the temperance issue in the words, "Rooms 
and Temperance." Incidentally, the rector of 
the Episcopal Church has given up his potation, 
and next door the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist 
minister, also unsupported by home-brewed 
beer, wrestles with his flock. Beddgelert Sab- 
bath-keeping has all the force of an unbroken 
tradition. A gentleman riding a-hunting on 
Sunday was confronted by an old woman who 
shook her Welsh Bible at him and showered 
vindictive Welsh Fs on his worldly head. Nor 
was our own experience much happier. Our 
drinking-water was fetched from Ty Ucha, 
and we had good reason to believe it was re- 
sponsible for wretched feelings. One Sunday 
morning I consulted our Welsh hostess, ex- 
plained to her what we thought of the water, 
and asked whether we might have some brought 
from another spring. We were told that it 
could not be drawn on the Sabbath, but would 
be brought to us on Monday morning ! In 
every cottage there is a mammoth Welsh Bible, 

[^3 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



and groups of smaller Bibles both Welsh and 
English. We went into one deserted mountain 
hut to take pictures of the interior; inside, 
together with an old trunk, a rusty fluting-iron, 
kettles, pans, a portion of the woven couch 
strung over the wide fireplace, and old clothes, 
we found two Welsh Bibles, one English Bible, 
and a torn portion of " Pilgrim's Progress." 

Indeed, the religious spirit of the place is a 
tradition but infrequently broken in the past 
thousand years. Edward I had burned the priory 
(now St. Mary's Church), which was erected 
as a hospitium in connexion with a small chapel 
and schoolhouse in the second half of the sixth 
century; Henry VIII endeavoured to crush its 
power, and then in 1830 the good villagers 
themselves entered upon the pious task of re- 
novation. In order to make the renovation as 
thorough as possible, they tore down all the 
rare wood-carving, using it for kindling-wood, 
and in some instances making pieces of house- 
hold furniture from it; they put in a false ceil- 
ing of clapboards hiding the fine Gothic arch 
of the roof; the ceiling, together with the walls, 
they whitewashed, and completed their pious 
task by boarding up several exquisitely shaped 

[ 24] 




THE gt EEN S TOWER, CONWAY CASTLE 

From an engra-ving by Cuit(, iSlJ 



A Village in Eryri 



lancet windows. Fortunately the renovation 
has been followed by a restoration, and now 
the priory may be seen in some of its ancient 
beauty, with the old yew tree spreading low 
over the gravestones and the Gwynen pouring 
by its northern walls, singing the same moun- 
tain song it sang when the canons regular of 
St. Augustine, barefooted, gray-habited, with 
crucifix and rosary, marched solemnly from 
chapel to hospitium. 

The name Beddgelert, the Grave of Gelert 
(^), brings hundreds of Welsh people to see 
this town each year. It is not an uncommon 
spectacle to see a man, as he stands by the 
dog's grave, brushing away tears, or a little 
child crying bitterly. The story is of Prince 
Llewelyn's greyhound, who saved his master's 
baby by killing a fierce wolf, and then was slain 
by his master's sword, for the Prince, entering, 
saw the cradle overturned and the greyhound's 
mouth covered with blood. The name of the 
place, however, has nothing to do with the 
myth of Gelert; the little hill on which the 
grave stands had for hundreds of years been 
called " Bryn-y-Bedd," the " Hill of the Grave," 
a mound where the Irish chief Celert, a far 

[25] 



Gallant Little Wales 



earlier hero than the dog, may have been 
buried. There are parallels in other folk-lore 
for this tale, and one even in the Sanscrit has 
been discovered in which, in place of Northern 
wolf, a snake is the evil agent. There is an 
unmistakable twinkle in a Beddgelert eye when- 
ever the story is told. Alas ! that the greyhound 
buried there was not presented to Prince Llew- 
elyn by his father-in-law. King John, in the 
year 1205, but, the petted possession of two 
Beddgelert spinsters, was presented by them at 
the beginning of the nineteenth century to the 
sagacious David Prichard, the first owner of the 
Royal Goat Hotel, and promptly interred by 
him in the famous mound. 

Every one of the three valley roads of Bedd- 
gelert is filled with incidents of Welsh legend 
and folk-lore. Even in our materialistic age the 
credulous spirit abides here in this mountain- 
bred people, quick, lively, romantic. The vil- 
lage is filled with lovely legend and quaint lore ; 
in the farmhouses among the hills heroic stories 
are still told about Arthur and songs sung to 
Welsh melodies. There are tales of ghosts, 
and of goblins, brown road goblins, and gray 
goblins of the mist; of water sprites in the 
[ a6] 



A Village in Eryri 



mountain torrents, now a beautiful, half-naked 
maiden, now a fleshless old man ; of the " Can- 
dle of the Dead " with its clear white flame ; of 
the little red-eyed, red-eared " Hounds of Hell" 
flocking like sheep down some mountain-path ; 
of the pranks of " Lantern Jack ** on dark win- 
ter nights; of the fairies living in the summer 
among the bracken, in winter among heather 
and gorse, coming out of their haunts to dive 
thievishly into the farmers' pockets, or to steal 
butter and milk and cheese from the careful 
housewives. There are stories, too, of amiable, 
kindly fairies who carol and dance nightly. 

Driving up from Tremadoc past Tan yr 
Allt, where Shelley lived for a year, one comes 
to the bridge at the mouth of the pass. This 
bridge is said to have been built by no less a 
person than the Devil, who for his trouble got 
nothing in toll but a poor little dog that was 
first to scamper over it. Down the Nant Gwynen 
Valley, a narrow river valley running east out 
of Beddgelert, is Dinas Emrys, the home of the 
magician Merlin and at many times the abiding 
place of King Arthur. Merlin's well, on the 
very summit of Dinas Emrys, is still a discover- 
able well. There, too, surrounding the crown 

[^7] 



Gallant Little Wales 



of this singular hill, are traces and remains of 
the walls of an old Roman fortress ; and the en- 
trance over the narrow ridge to the crown of 
Dinas Emrys bears marks of stone hewn hun- 
dreds of years ago. Not more than three miles 
further in the same valley is a precipitous pass 
leading up towards Lliwedd by Snowdon, where 
some legends say Arthur fell and lies buried. 
Up this valley road over Pen y Pass, in a 
wilderness of boulders and crags tumbled hither 
and thither, is an interesting specimen of crom- 
lech, and near by some gigantic rocks so fitted 
together that they form a hut in which an old 
woman is said to have lived many, many years. 
I hope life was pleasanter to her during all 
those years than it was for us during even 
the few minutes we were within the strange 
enclosure. 

The third valley running out of Beddgelert 
is the valley of the Colwyn. This leads past 
Moel Hebog — in a cave on whose perpendic- 
ular side Owen Glendwr lay in hiding for 
months — towards Carnarvon, a city of a castle 
with casements : — 
" Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 
[28] 



A Village in Eryri 



There lying before one over the summer sea is 
the rim of Anglesey, quiet in its mirage of 
white sand and the green land stretching away 
into gray distance. Still many portions of the 
old Roman road connecting Segontium and 
Heriri Mons may be seen in this valley, bridle- 
paths the Welsh call " Ffyrdd Elen," " Elen's 
Roads." Towering above, Snowdon looks down, 
untroubled, from its splendid reach, upon these 
paths, from which, in sunshine and in mist, 
Druid and Roman, henchman of Edward and 
John, prince and poet and painter, have made 
the steep ascent and seen swimming before 
them, like the sea of time, a hundred hills; 
beyond, the wide glimmer of the ocean; and 
heard rising through the air the roar of torrent 
and stream. Halfway up Snowdon are the re- 
mains of a druidical temple. There, kneeling on 
some of the stones, I listened to the song of 
wind and sea, the Harp of Eryri, and tried to 
catch a little of the vast panorama, which was, 
somehow, strangely, mournfully human, hold- 
ing in sky-line and sea-line dim shadow of the 
hearts which had knelt here before — the im- 
memorial worshippers of untold beauty. 



Ill 

Hilltop Churches 

"Ah," said Bishop Baldwin, recovering his 
breath, " the nightingale followed wise counsel 
and never came into Wales." So, jocund as the 
most unordained, Baldwin's holy company of 
the twelfth century moved on its way, gather- 
ing ever more and more to it cloaks signed with 
the crusading cross of red. To mind come other 
figures and to mind come other pictures — wild, 
powerful, beautiful, pathetic — of a past that is a 
thousand or two thousand years old. In some 
rock-strewn valley, bleak and barren as the utter- 
most parts of the earth or terrible as the valley 
of the shadow of death, rises the cry of human 
sacrifice. Hundreds of years later, down a road- 
way bordered then as now with foxglove and 
bluebells and heather, rides a gallant company, 
gentle-mannered, on pleasure bent. Or by the 
walls of Conway Castle, Edward I bears the body 
of his Eleanor to its far resting-place in West- 
minster Abbey, where the stones are still fresh 
from the chisels of the builders. Here is " the 

[30] 



Hilltop Churches 



unimaginable touch of Time," a Past that as it 
shps away joins the mystery of a Future even 
at this instant in retreat. 

But the traveller does not go on foot week 
after week many scores of miles, with these 
thoughts always present, like Christian with a 
pack upon his back, and meeting as did Christ- 
ian many difficulties. True, a good heart faces 
the open road expecting many obstacles, and 
can find its wonder-ways even if it loses a night's 
rest. Giraldus Cambrensis, on the forward march 
with the Bishop through Wales, could vouch 
for an island in which no one dies, for a wan- 
dering bell, for a whale with three golden teeth, 
for grasshoppers that sing better when their heads 
are cut off. He tells the story of a lad, Sisillus 
Long Leg by name, who suffered a violent per- 
secution from toads that in the end consumed 
the young man to the very bones. And like 
most ecclesiastics, Giraldus allows himself the 
relaxation of a good fish story. 

This credulity, charming as it is and panacea 
for the physical tedium of the open road, is the 
faculty of which the pedestrian of to-day must 
strip himself No other pilgrimages of which I 
know have been made to these little churches, 

[31 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



except by Mr. Herbert North, of Wales, — who 
has studied the old churches of Arllechwyd 
simply, and to whose architectural insight 1 
am greatly indebted, — and by myself. During 
many weeks my journey took me from hillside 
to hillside and mountain-top to mountain-top, 
studying these ancient foundations. My work 
was grounded upon incredulity; everything 
was recorded, nothing concluded. As a motto 
the remark of the only thoughtful sexton I have 
met out of literature might have been taken. 
Contemplating an old stone at St. Mary, Con- 
way, inscribed "Y 1066," he said, "Hit wants 
a wise 'ead to find hit out." At Gyffin beyond 
Conway we pointed to one object after another 
in the church with the single question — an 
American question : — 

"How old is it?" 

"It's very old, mum," came the reply. 

"How old?" 

" Oh, very old, mum," in an impressive voice. 

Having tested barrel vault, paintings, chan- 
cel, windows, rood screen, roof, walls, doors, in 
this fashion, we had worked ourselves out of 
the church, so to speak, and I pointed up to a 
shiny tin rooster crowing upon the bell-cot. 

[32] 




THE GREAT HALL AT CONWAY CASTLE 

From an engra-vtng by Cuttt 



Hilltop Churches 



" How old is it, the rooster ^ " I said. 

" Oh, very old, mum," came the solemn reply. 

At another place we were told that the bell 
swinging in the cot, and sounding sweetly after 
the long journey uphill, dated from the fourth 
century. It was useless to inform the poor soul 
that there were none but hand-bells then in North 
Wales, and that she was in this case only a 
little matter of one thousand years out of the 
way. After a mount up to Llangelynin, taken 
hastily, and much investigation of objects gen- 
uinely ancient, the woman who had us in thrall 
said, pointing to a dark recess under a narrow, 
fixed pew, black as darkness, and not more than 
one foot from the pew in front of it, "There 's 
a very old tablet there, mum, my son says." 
Perhaps she had calculated the discrepancy 
between the width of the pew and myself; how- 
ever, I got through to the floor, wiped off the 
dust with a handkerchief, and out blinked, as 
sleepily as if it were the very Rip Van Winkle 
of stones, the young date 1874! Wild steeple 
chases there were in plenty, with minor fatal- 
ities to limb and courage. It is useless, when one 
mountain-top has been achieved, to find that 
after all there is nothing left except the incon- 



Gallant Little Wales 



siderable mountain itself, — it is useless then to 
discover upon an opposite summit, whose peak, 
could be reached by a well-modulated voice, an 
extant church of indubitable antiquity, for to 
meet with that church would require an all-day's 
walk. There was one steeple chase without even 
the comfort of another church in view. 

Once reconciled to these surprises, for which 
no one can be held accountable, and to the in- 
effectiveness of the sextons whom no one must 
suppose responsible, there are no chances for 
disappointments except such as are self-created. 
The attendants in most cases are women, and 
wretched creatures some of them are. In one 
place a woman with a goitre, and one eye gone, 
kept the keys. She was admirably proud of her 
son because he did know something, but as the 
son spent all his days in a mine we were not in 
a way to inherit his wisdom. Another woman 
was deaf and dumb and foolish. A lad who took 
us through a church of considerable importance, 
if antiquity can make these deserted churches 
important, was so stupid he received a lecture 
upon his ignorance. His unanswerable sectarian 
reply was that he did not belong to that church 
anyway. We met with some smart young girls 
[34] 



Hilltop Churches 



who, with their twenty years of wisdom, were 
above knowledge concerning anything so rusty 
and tumble-down as the church by means of 
which they hoped to win sixpences for ribbons. 
There were two or three apple-cheeked old 
women clad in caps and bobbing their curtsies. 
To one, a sweet old soul, I was explaining that 
a certain door could not be very ancient and 
have the big nails it had in it. " Uch," she re- 
plied, in distress. " Well, indeed, mum, perhaps 
they were put in later to hold it together." It 
may be said, I think, that the keys are kept as 
far away as possible, why I cannot say. So is 
the vicar kept as far away as possible : even the 
curates get the habit and stay away when they 
can. As a rule, the churches are not set down 
in the midst of habitable villages, but most often 
upon remote hillsides or hilltops. There is an- 
other difficulty to be encountered also, in the 
person of the kindly individual who could show 
you what you wish, but wishes to show you 
something else. One old woman — the Ancient 
Mariner himself could not have been more 
irresistible — detained us endlessly while she 
searched for and displayed the Duchess of 
Westminster's photograph. 
[35] 



Gallant Little Wales 



These are some of the troubles in a progress 
otherwise enchanting ; once realized, it is well 
to forget them, together with the feet that were 
sometimes too weary to travel five miles further 
and the shoulder that ached under the strap. 
With its ache of all the ages the dream of an- 
cient beauty has no place in it for an hour's 
weariness. As if the riddle of existence could 
be explained by a wall rain- washed and worn, 
upon which grow lichen, moss, rustling grass, 
and even trees, and by lintels tipping earthward, 
golden flowers blowing upon them ! The eye 
travels thirstily from stone to stone, or to some 
peaceful bell-cot pointing the bare ridge of a 
bleak, sheep-covered hill, or to the far-away hills 
and gray sky and solemn, dreary places. Spirit- 
ually it is easy to understand why these churches 
are on the hills, and the controversy about their 
position seems a matter of no further moment. 
There are other pictures, too, of churches by 
the sea, in the main not as old as those upon 
the mountains, enclosures where even the tomb- 
stones are crowded together in their last sleep. 
Beyond these churchyards lies the encircling 
shore with ever the white lip of the sea at its 
edge; above, low-lying regiments of clouds 

[36] 



Hilltop Churches 



march Snowdon-wards. Upon one eminence is 
the church, upon another, nearer the water, a 
castle, and in the valley between these crum- 
bling sanctities of power and spirit is the little 
town, busy still, its roofs making a joyous show 
of colour beneath the blue sky. Within these 
churches by the sea there is ever the tideless roar 
of the waters ringing upon the shores, and from 
these church doorways the eye dreams upon 
the castle wasting with the land at its feet, or 
the "llys" of King Mark, or upon the faint 
blue rim of some island, holy as the mother of 
good men. Along the road on one side is the 
sea; on the other, green hills rise into the blue 
of the sky, their slopes a mosaic of gray sheep 
walls. And here out of the village at the end of 
a grass-grown road, by the sea, lies a little church, 
around which the sands have blown through so 
many centuries that the windows show just the 
caps looking like sleepy eyes out of the hud- 
dled graves. One minute time rolls like a char- 
iot wheel crushing all things, another moment 
and it is a mystic circle without beginning and 
without end. The graves upon the hillsides, 
young in their hundreds of years, look down 
upon the mounds of the British undisturbed in 

[37] 



Gallant Little Wales 



a millennial repose, and upon a stone lying as 
hands two thousand years ago placed it. And 
past the ears rush the centuries of all eternity, 
as in the travelling of a mighty wind. 

Seeing with the eye of visions it is not hard 
to recreate a vanished past, to construct again 
the primitive British church of wood and wat- 
tle, with its beauty of oaken rafter and carved 
wood which stone now encloses. There is still 
an ancient wooden church in Greenstead, Es- 
sex, in plan much like little churches of North 
Wales, — the walls six feet high made of half 
trees side by side, the roof a tie beam, with 
struts, less than six feet from the floor. This 
parallelogram follows out the double square of 
what was undoubtedly the plan of the ancient 
British church, something that was still geo- 
metrically the square sanctuary with its square 
altar typifying the heavenly Jerusalem. Bede, 
in his " Ecclesiastical History," speaks of " a 
church fit for an Episcopal See ; which, how- 
ever, after the manner of the Scots, he [Finan] 
did not erect of stone, but of sawn timber, 
covering it with reeds." It is worth remember- 
ing that the little churches being discussed are 
unique examples of a national type based, not 

[38] 



Hilltop Churches 



upon the Roman basilica, but upon the Tem- 
ple, with its square Holy of Holies, and illus- 
trating certain features ; a square east end with 
east window, an altar concealed behind screens, 
and a south door instead of a western portal. 
The wood and wattle churches have disap- 
peared, but upon the foundation lines have 
arisen the present stone churches of North 
Wales, dating back in general to the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries. Their walls of stone are 
daubed at the joints with mud, similar to the 
treatment the wattle buildings had received, 
and the whole whitewashed inside and out. 
The roof, later covered with oaken shingles and 
now with soft-coloured slates, was in the Mid- 
dle Ages thatched deeply with reed or straw. 
At the east end was the small slit window, and 
at the south end a door so low that even a short 
person must stoop to enter it. Originally there 
were no bell turrets or porches, and at the east- 
ern gable merely a wooden cross. Inside, a 
screen divided the building in half, the squints 
covered by veils, and several doors opening 
into the altar space. Probably the screen was 
decorated with painting as the barrel vaults 
came to be. Within and without, the sanctuary 



Gallant Little Wales 



gleamed pure white. The Saxons learned the 
use of whitewash from the British, and St. Wil- 
frid gloried in having washed the York Min- 
ster of his day " whiter than snow." 

As the cottages, coloured white or yellow or 
pink, are seen nestling against the hills of Wales, 
one regrets that the church no longer receives 
as in olden days the same treatment. With the 
wash worn from the churches and never re- 
newed, the country has lost in picturesque 
beauty. How pretty these buildings must have 
looked, with their steep thatched roofs and 
white bell-cots gleaming in the midst of 
dark yews, or perhaps some golden-tinted 
church glowing like a crocus in the midst of 
pines. Not only have the colours faded, as if 
the land were some bright missal turning gray, 
but the odd circular huts with their conical 
thatched roofs, in which the natives once lived, 
have tumbled down. In those days was a beau- 
tiful hospitality, the host and hostess serving 
until all were served, and in these rude dwell- 
ings the ancient harp was played ; and from the 
Avooden book, its revolving square crossbars 
inscribed with letters or notes of music, were 
read the ancient song and poetry of Wales. 

[ 40 ] 



Hilltop Churches 



When the rectangular cottage came in it did 
not differ greatly from the circular hut. There 
were windows — "wind-eyes" — covered with 
a wooden lattice and shutter, the walls smoothly 
plastered, and the interior made less primitive 
by the use of three-legged tables and chairs. 
Still later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, the one space was divided off into 
kitchen, chamber, and loft, the kitchen open to 
the roof and airy, healthful, and clean. Hospi- 
tality was sacred then ; any man might enter a 
dwelling, and delivering up his arms stay as 
long as he would. 

The church was but another sanctuary in 
olden days where men could take refuge from 
sin or foe. The " llan," which is the prefix to 
fully eight tenths of all the names of ancient 
churches in North Wales, means " enclosure." 
Probably in these places were the earliest mon- 
astic settlements, at a time when the " llan," as 
the Irish " rath," enclosed habitation as well as 
sanctuary. But as the years brought about greater 
specification in the functions of church and state 
the term narrowed itself down and was applied 
solely to the church. The old churchyard walls 
are still more or less circular like British fort 
[41 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



walls. Llangelynin has an enclosure that undoubt- 
edly follows the old lines. The walls of the 
churchyard near Holyhead are extremely ancient, 
seventeen feet high and six feet thick. This 
masonry, from the presence of certain round 
towers and the particular plastering used, is 
known to be Roman. Set away from the world 
that is " too much with us," these enclosures are 
charming old spaces, habitable in a sweet sense. 
The grass looks peace into tired eyes, and to 
eyes eager with plans rest here is merely an 
emphasis upon the joy of living. And here, as 
the stiles into the close show, the children play 
and have played from generation to generation. 
Here they climbed upon the roof, and here 
against the north and west walls, where burials 
are never made, they played ball and scratched 
upon the stone their scoring-marks. 

At Llangelynin there are no yew trees ; that 
windy height is too bleak for even the sturdy 
yew. Only white harebells and hardy grass blow 
about on its bare rock-strewn summit. But in 
most of the enclosures the yew still stands as 
the one enduring monument of a past whose 
very rocks have been covered by the silt of over 
a thousand years. Many of these trees date from 

[42 ] 



Hilltop Churches 



a British period and remain emblematic to-day 
as they were then. Sometimes it is a single yew 
by the lychgate which one sees, or an alley of 
the deathless green, or perhaps yew branches com- 
pletely veil a gable end of the little church. At 
Beddgelert, the oldest foundation in all Wales, 
the yew stands to-day as it stood some two thou- 
sand years ago; about its base Jhave rushed 
the floods of wild mountain torrents, from its 
feet the graves of centuries have been washed 
away down to the all-embracing sea. Like child- 
ren of yesterday are the mediseval lychgates 
through which one passes into the church enclos- 
ure and through which is often caught the first 
glimpse of the church bell-cot. At Caerhun (the 
ancient Canovium), where the yew spreads over 
the gate is a double bell-cot, which, as it has the 
traditional straight ridge and gable in the middle, 
is amongst the oldest in Wales, of the fourteenth 
or fifteenth century, for the cots as well as the lych- 
gates are "recent" in the life of these churches. 
The little crucifixes with their straight arms are 
also of this date. Before this time the local 
churches had nothing but hand-bells, which were 
held in great reverence. One of them may be 
seen in the stone coffin of Llewelyn the Great 
[43 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



at Llanrwst. It is about ten inches high and 
cast on an oblong plan. Gildas gave such a bell 
to St. David. Six hundred years later, in the 
twelfth century, Giraldus Cambrensis tells the 
story of a portable bell called " Bangu " which, 
when a certain woman carried it to a castle where 
her husband was wrongfully imprisoned, caused 
the destruction of the whole town except the 
church walls. The campanology of North Wales 
is a romance in itself, a collection of odd, inter- 
esting, pathetic tales of past miracles, past friend- 
ships, past enmities. 

The original buildings not only did not have 
lychgates and bell-cots, they also did not have 
porches, and some to-day do not have them. 
But they are being added from time to time, 
and fearful are some of them to behold. At 
St. Mary's, Llanfwrog Church, just across the 
bridge from quaint Ruthin, where the Duchess 
of Westminster has lived and is of vastly more 
interest to the people than gable ends and oaken 
rafters and other such stuff, fit only for the attics 
of men's minds, is a bit of " restoration" suitable 
for display in the windows of a carriage-shop. 
The chancel railing is bright green, red, and 
black, the pews black and red, — a foretaste 
[44] 



Hilltop Churches 



possibly of the landscape into which some of 
their occupants will one day take a dip, — 
and the stained glass vies with a refracted solar 
ray in yellows and oranges and reds and blues 
and greens. From this " restored " edifice drops 
a long flight of steps past the windows and sign- 
board of an ancient hostelry, " Ye Labour in 
Vain Inn." One cannot help wishing that the 
white gentleman upon the signboard, who is 
scrubbing a black man in a tub of water, would 
take his scrubbing-brush up to the church. Often, 
after all else has been hopelessly restored and all 
vestiges of harmonious beauty have disappeared, 
the old doorway remains, witness of an instinct- 
ive reverence for a threshold. Many of the 
circular-headed doorways, now hooded with 
porches, date from the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries and even earlier, and through them 
one passes over a mere sill into the sacred 
enclosure. 

A few points, simple and easy to remember 
as well as easy to discover, give an added intel- 
ligent pleasure in the study of these churches. 
The oldest churches are generally from twelve 
feet six inches to fourteen feet wide ; the early 
walls from three feet to three feet six inches 

[45] 



Gallant Little Wales 



thick. Sixteenth-century walls rarely exceed two 
feet and a half in thickness. The old wattle 
buildings were daubed with a mixture of clay 
and cow dung; these church walls are built with 
earth and rendered on the face with lime and 
mortar. Buttresses are sometimes found, but 
they do not belong to early local work. The 
roofs are easy to examine and often of an en- 
chanting beauty. At Llangelynin is a roof which 
is probably the original twelfth-century cover- 
ing. The roof at Llanrhychwyn is also of the 
close couple type; here the struts are straight, 
but carved, and there are two ties across the 
nave. In some of these roofs are intermediary 
rafters, added when the thatch was replaced by 
slate. 

The earliest mention of a chancel of which I 
know is that in the poems of Cynddelw, who 
lived in the twelfth century, in his ode to Ty- 
silio, when he speaks of a certain church as 
the "light or shining church" with a chancel 
for mass. We cannot assume that even in 
the twelfth century chancels were by any means 
common in North Wales. At Mallwyd Church 
there was, not so long ago, a communion table 
in the centre of the building, and there is no 

[46] 



Hilltop Churches 



question but that holy ceremonies were per- 
formed originally, instead of at a chancel end, 
in the midst of this rectangular Holy of Holies. 
At Bardsey, Pennant found an insulated stone 
altar rather nearer the east end than the centre. 
The rough, uneven slate paving in these churches 
is comparatively modern, and it might be added 
comparatively luxurious. The first paving was 
mud and sometimes flat stones. Formerly the 
windows were covered by wooden shutters or 
lattices; that was the usage in all conventual 
buildings. Now the windows are either well 
or illy filled with coloured glass. In many of 
the churches falling into great dilapidation the 
windows have been stuffed with stone and mor- 
tar, or rudely boarded over. Some of the stained 
glass is genuinely ugly and some of it genuinely 
and anciently lovely. That at Llanrhychwyn, 
coloured in brown line and yellow stain and 
representing the Virgin and Child and the Holy 
Trinity, is of the fifteenth century and still beau- 
tiful. Probably the use of glass^was not intro- 
duced into Wales till the thirteenth century. 
West windows were unknown in local Welsh 
work. Where a window with such an exposure 
is found, the opening did not belong to the early 

[47 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



church. There are windows of great antiquity 
in these churches. Look at the lintelled win- 
dow in the passageway into St. Beuno's Chapel. 
Courage hesitates at assigning a date to this bit 
of work. There are windows far more elaborate 
of a comparatively early date, but they are the 
work of Latin monks and do not follow the 
straight lines of the native British architecture. 
An exquisite example of early Latin work is 
that of the Gilbertine monks upon the Bedd- 
gelert triplet. 

The barrel vaults in these churches are curious 
concave coverings over the chancel end, ark- 
like in form and supposed type of the ancient 
church. These oaken canopies have been elab- 
orately painted in the past; now they are to be 
seen in every stage of dilapidation, provoking 
the eye by their interrupted pictures or faint 
lines of red and blue. They are approximately 
of the same date, although not in the same 
condition, for their destruction is due to leaky 
roofs and not to age. The ground colour was 
the green-blue the Middle Ages loved so well, 
and the other colours red, yellow, and white. 
At Llandanwg, where the sea would flow into 
the western door were it not for a big embank- 

[ 48 ] 



Hilltop Churches 



ment, there is a barrel vault with faint traces of 
painting upon it. An old man whose father and 
mother were the last people to be married there 
told us he took an interest in it, it was the only 
church in Harlech Parish fifty years ago, and "the 
only service held there then was when the parson 
and the clerk used to go over and enjoy drinking 
their beer on the gravestones." English came 
stiff to his tongue, but he described the fear- 
ful condition of the church, and the way the 
people took off the seats for firewood and the 
children made a playhouse of the abandoned 
structure. In one corner of the barrel vault was 
a picture of the Devil prodding people down 
into hell. The children threw things at these 
paintings, mud and other articles, till the pictures 
were completely destroyed. Whatever the sub- 
ject, it is pleasant to recall the colouring of the 
barrel vaults, for, executed five or six hundred 
years ago, they must have been brightly beau- 
tiful like the margins of an illuminated book, 
radiant with something of the blue and gold of 
very heaven itself Of the rood screens and lofts 
that veiled the chancel space, there are but few 
left intact; of the sacred rood itself, no vestige 
except the socket on the candlebeam into which 

[49] 



Gallant Little Whales 



its pedestal slipped. Fanaticism has swept this 
feature away. In Beddgelert their rood-screen 
carving was converted into chairs for household 
use or fuel for warmth. Strangely enough, Queen 
Elizabeth was the last defender of the screen's 
mystical beauty of carven wood and the silent 
admonishing figure stretched upon its fa9ade. 
At Llanengan there is a screen of rare delicacy, 
stolen, together with some elbow stalls and sil- 
ver bells, from Bardsey, that resting-place of 
saints which seems to have been to the ecclesias- 
tical world what Fuseli said Blake was to the 
art world, "good to steal from." Chests, worm- 
eaten and with rusty bolts, are often among the 
church treasures. St. Beuno's chest at Clynnog 
is as old as the saint himself And at Clynnog, 
too, are dog tongs, or lazy tongs as they were 
sometimes called, in each paddle four sharp- 
ened nails which must have seemed bitter to 
any doggie's sides, lean or fat, as he was lifted igno- 
miniously out of the sanctuary. And, oh, woe if 
it caught him by the tail or foot! There are 
different types of fonts in these churches : small 
square fonts like the earliest of Palestine, Asia 
Minor, Egypt; extremely small fonts of various 
shapes dating from the eleventh to the four- 

[50] 



Hilltop Churches 



teenth century; large fonts used for immersion, 
and belonging to the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries. At Llanderfel near Corwen is a 
wooden image, never, I imagine, satisfactorily 
accounted for. It is a horse, though curiously 
like a deer in appearance. This figure was the 
standard for the image that rested upon it and 
which went, several hundred years ago, to help 
in the burning of poor Friar Forest at Smith- 
field, to whom, while the fire crackled about 
his feet, Latimer preached a sermon. Now even 
the brass tablet on the standard has been sent to 
the British Museum, and the standard itself, till 
within the last few years, used for a pig-trough. 
Apparently London thought a Welshman 
who denied the supremacy of the king worth 
burning, difficult to be rid of Well might 
Englishmen consider such a man's forebears in 
saintship. The Latins tried to rid the Western 
world of these anomalies in spiritual heritage — 
in vain ! The Reformation burnt them. In vain, 
too, for the Welshman to-day, nonconformist 
and conformist alike, is as tenacious of the lists 
of his hagiology as ever he was a thousand years 
ago. To the ancient Celt there were three free 
dignitaries: church, land, and poet. To-day 

[51 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



these remain the revered dignitaries to the 
Welshman. In the past these offices had been 
closely united, for to a Welshman saintship 
came by birth, celebrity depended afterwards 
upon how he acted. There is an odd title to a 
Welsh catalogue of saints : " Bonedd Saint ynys 
Prydain," — the Gentility of the Saints of the 
Isle of Britain. An old Irish song says of St. 
Patrick that he "was a gentleman and came of 
decent people," a fact which to us does not 
seem prerequisite for saintdom. Not so to the 
Celt; and it is best to keep this essential differ- 
ence in mind, or one might be puzzled by run- 
ning across the annals, some day, of a saint in 
so cheery a state that he fell into his own holy 
well and escaped drowning only because of the 
good luck universally known to attend people 
in a similar condition. The object of the Celtic 
saint, till he became Latinized, was to serve his 
tribe by increasing its riches and enlarging its 
boundaries. It was not necessary for him, as it 
was for his brother Latin, to receive any papal 
sanction for his sainthood or to work any mir- 
acles. His carte to sanctity was membership 
in a certain family or monastery. The Latin 
Christian world, establishing its supremacy by 

[ 52] 




THE EAGLE TOWER OF CARNARVON CASTLE 

From an engra'ving by Cuitt 



Hilltop Churches 



degrees, could not fail to scoff at the temporal 
emphasis of Welsh saintdom. Even Giraldus, 
a Welshman, comments mildly upon the vin- 
dictiveness of certain saints, of whom he often 
knew more than he cared to tell. Gradually, 
by ridicule chiefly, the lists of Celtic holy men 
were closed. Even Bardsey, the Insula Sanct- 
orum of the Welsh, does not escape a laugh 
from many critics, one of whom observes that 
"It would be more facile to find graves in 
Bardsey for so many saints than saints for so 
many graves"; a remark grudging and ungra- 
cious, for the world has condescended to steal 
everything from Bardsey and might leave it at 
least the glory of claiming as many dead saints 
as it pleases. 

The tales, fabulous and odd, told of Welsh 
saints, Welsh relics, and holy wells, are partic- 
ularly charming because they are not marred 
by over-didacticism. Tydecho was an illustrious 
saint who lived in the time of King Arthur. 
Retiring from the world, he led a life of min- 
gled austerity in penance and of useful hours of 
ploughing. One day a youth seized his oxen, 
but the next day wild stags were drawing the 
plough, and a wolf harrowing after them. Fur- 

[ ^,1^ 



Gallant L,ittle Wales 



ious, the youth brought his dogs to chase away 
Tydecho's wild friends. While enjoying this 
diversion he seated himself upon a stone ; at- 
tempting to rise he found himself fixed to the 
rock. Truly a humiliating position for a proud- 
spirited youth who enjoys taunting an old man! 
Friendship between man and beast is woven 
into these tales like the bright colours threading 
the letters of an ancient bestiary. St. Monacella 
protected hares from Brochwel Yscythrog, who 
was hunting them. She hid the trembling little 
beasts under her robe and, praying devoutly, 
faced the dogs. The dogs ceased their running, 
and even when the horn was blown as a com- 
mand to them to follow the hare, they stole 
away howling and the horn stuck to the hunts- 
man's lips. After Brochwel had listened to 
Monacella's plea, the little creatures were re- 
leased, and to this day no one in the parish will 
hunt one of Monacella's lambs. 

Many and attractively full of poetry are the 
superstitions that still live in the solitudes of 
northern Wales. "Bees were created in para- 
dise," say the " Leges Wallicse," " and no light 
save beeswax is to be used at mass." When on 
the fall of man they left paradise, God Himself 

[ 54] 



Hilltop Churches 



is said to have blessed them. They produced, 
too, the nectarious "medd" of which the ancient 
Britons thought so much. One day we encoun- 
tered a hillside woman in great distress, breath- 
less and flapping her apron ; her bees were 
running away and apparently the worldly crea- 
ture had no intention of letting them run back 
to paradise. Bent pins are still to be found at 
the bottom of the sacred well within the church 
close, pins dropped in before bathing to cure 
warts. Woe to the bather who failed to drop 
in the propitiatory pin, for he promptly caught 
the warts of which others had got rid. And in 
these holy wells the clothes of sick children 
were washed, with happy auguries if the little 
garments floated, with fell portent if they sank. 
At Llangelynin, where the well is still in ex- 
cellent condition, an old woman told me that 
to cure a sick child a stranger to the family 
must dip the child in after sundown. Spitting 
upon hearing the name of the Devil may not 
be polite, but it is a simple way of expressing 
contempt, and so, too, is smiting the breast 
in self-condemnatory woe at the name of 
Judas. Some of their superstitions and cus- 
toms, despite the smack of folly, are wise in 

[55] 



Gallant Little Wales 



their emphasis upon the power of the imagina- 
tion. 

There are, too, some wholesome customs of 
precedence. The parson always used to go out 
of chapel first, — in some places he does so 
still, — and the parishioner who disputed this 
order of rank might have his ears boxed for his 
trouble. After the baptism of a little child old 
women wash their failing eyes in the font with 
pathetic faith in the virtue of new, God-given 
life. There used to be some sweet customs, not 
entirely lost yet, connected with burial. As the 
coffin rested on the bier outside the door, the 
next of kin among the women gave to the poor- 
est persons in the parish, over the body of the 
dead, a great dish filled with white bread. Then 
a cup of drink was handed across the bier to 
the same poor and all knelt to repeat the Lord's 
Prayer. At every crossroad between the house 
and church they knelt again to pray, the sex- 
ton's hand-bell quiet only when all knees were 
on the earth. 

On the way from church to church many 
tablets arrest the eye, kneeling fathers and 
mothers with processions of kneeling children 
in a line behind them. The viva voce history of 

[56] 



Hilltop Churches 



these reliefs suggests the less quaint and more 
beautiful and enduring relievo of sepulchral 
urns. At Clynnog I counted thirteen children 
in happy procession after one father. At Con- 
way I might have counted twenty-nine if I had 
wished to, but I had no such wish. At Corwen 
we found knee-holes in both footstones and 
headstones to make comfortable the knees of 
friends while they prayed, — or meditated, as I 
confess I did, upon the hideousness of most 
sepulchral carving and inscription. There was 
one part of these records which, with even the 
best traditions behind me, could not be under- 
taken — the epitaph or similar memento. Early 
in the journey this inscription was encountered: 

Heare lyeth the body of 

John, ap Robert, ap Forth, ap 

David, ap Griffith, ap David 

Vauchan, ap Blethyn, ap 

Griffith, ap Meredith, 

ap Jerworth, ap Llewelyn, 

ap Jerorh, ap Heilin, ap 

Cowryd, ap Cadvan, ap 

Alawgwa, ap Cadell, the 

King of Powys, who 

departed this life the 

[57] 



Gallant Lttile Wales 



XX day of March, in the 

Year of our Lord God 

1642, and of 

his age XCV. 

Now it was plain that this was one of the re- 
sults of the saints' unsaintly emphasis upon a 
family-tree. Certainly a man has a right to as 
many ancestors as he can compass. But there- 
after, when I saw the usual clusters of "aps" 
and "GrifFyevanjoneses," I experienced a reluct- 
ant and fluttering sensation within accompanied 
by external haste to get elsewhere. Just one 
other epitaph, by reason of its brevity, caught 
my pencil : — 

Here lies John Shore, 
I say no more ; 
Who was alive 
In sixty-five. 



IV 



Dr. Johnsons Tour of North 
Wales 

**What should we speak of 
When we are as old as you ? When we shall hear 
The rain and wind beat dark December, how 
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse 
The freezing hours away ? We have seen nothing. ' ' 

Even the motion of driving in a post-chaise 
captivated the fancy of Dr. Johnson, for he said, 
" If I had no duties, and no reference to futur- 
ity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in 
a post-chaise with a pretty woman ; but she 
should be one who could understand me, and 
would add something to the conversation." Mrs. 
Piozzi, who, except for that of prettiness, ful- 
filled these requirements both as a brilliant con- 
versationalist and owner of a post-chaise, asked 
her beloved Doctor why he doted on a coach. 
Johnson^s reply was, that in the first place the 
company was shut in with him "and could not 
escape as out of a room," and that in the second 
place, he could hear all the conversation in a 

[59] 



Gallant Little Wales 



carriage. Any lamentations while travelling thus 
he considered proof of an empty head or tongue 
that wished to talk and had nothing about which 
to talk. "A mill that goes without grist," he ex- 
claimed, " is as good a companion as such crea- 
tures." As for himself, he felt no inconvenience 
upon the road and he expected others to feel 
none. He allowed nobody to complain of rain, 
sun, or dust. And so greatly did he love this 
act of going forward that Mrs. Thrale (Mrs. 
Piozzi) said she could not tell how far he might 
be taken before he would think of refresh- 
ments. 

Yet the impression which Macaulay gave of 
Johnson's attitude towards travelling is the one 
generally held : " Of foreign travel and of history 
he spoke with the fierce and boisterous contempt 
of ignorance. ' What does a man learn by trav- 
elling % Is Beauclerk the better for travelling *? 
What did Lord Claremount learn in his travels, 
except that there was a snake in one of the 
pyramids of Egypt *? ' " History has proved that 
Macaulay could be brilliantly inaccurate ; cer- 
tainly in this estimate of Johnson he was so. In 
still another passage Macaulay says that Dr. 
Johnson "took it for granted that everybody 

[60] 



Dr. yohnsons 'Tour of North TFales 

who lived in the country was either stupid or 
miserable." The first twenty-seven years of his 
life Johnson spent in small country towns and, 
although he was sometimes miserable, because 
he was wretchedly poor, he was never stupid. 

It was the young traveller whom he censured, 
not the mature traveller or travelling in general. 
It was characteristic of him to say, " I never 
like young travellers; they go too raw to make 
any great remarks." Indeed, so grave was his 
sense of the value of travel that he took it upon 
himself to rebuke Boswell, as Boswell records : 
" Dr. Johnson expressed a particular enthusiasm 
with respect to visiting the Wall of China. I 
catched it for the moment, and said I really be- 
lieved I should go and see the Wall of China 
had I not children, of whom it was my duty to 
take care. ' Sir,' (said he), ' by doing so you 
would do what would be of importance in rais- 
ing your children to eminence. There would be 
a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and 
curiosity. They would be at all times as the 
children of a man who had gone to view the 
Wall of China. I am serious, sir. ' " 

In his college days Johnson may not have 
had the same reasons as the young poet Keats 
[6i ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



for going " wonderways," but reasons he had. 
With the Doctor, perhaps even more truly than 
with Keats, curiosity was " the first passion and 
the last." While an undergraduate he was heard 
to say, " I have a mind to see what is done in 
other places of learning. I '11 go and visit the 
universities abroad. I '11 go to France and Italy. 
I '11 go to Padua." Twice he urged Boswell " to 
perambulate Spain," and of their tour to the 
Hebrides everybody knows. There was talk of 
his going to Iceland, and for a time the great 
Doctor discussed travelling around the world 
with two friends. 

Of the existence of the journal of Johnson's 
tour in North Wales even Boswell did not know. 
This journey was begun by the Thrales and 
the Doctor leaving Streatham at eleven o'clock 
on Tuesday morning of July 15, 1774. On their 
way they stopped at Litchfield at the house of 
Dr. Darwin, psychologist, poet, and grandfather 
of Charles Darwin, of whose roses Mrs. Piozzi 
wrote, " I have no roses equal to those at Litch- 
field, where on one tree I recollect counting 
eighty-four within my own reach; it grew against 
the house of Dr. Darwin." 

After passing through several towns on their 

[62] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

route to North Wales they came, a party of 
four, Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, little Queenie and 
Johnson, to Chester on July twenty-seventh. 
Of Chester the Doctor made short work. He 
was more interested in a grammar school held 
in part of the Abbey refectory than in aught 
else, and wrote particularly, " The Master seemed 
glad to see me." Of course the Master was glad, 
for was not Johnson the greatest man of his day ^ 
There is not one word for the quiet beauty of 
the Dee, no mention of Cheshire cheese, and 
nothing about Chester ale, which perhaps John- 
son found as bad as did Sion Tudor. Of their 
sojourn in Chester we get a more lively picture 
from Mrs. Thrale's comment on the entry in 
the Doctor's journal than from the journal itself 
Johnson wrote, " We walked round the walls, 
which are compleat." Mrs. Piozzi observed, 
"Of those ill-fated walls Dr. Johnson might 
have learned the extent from any one. He has 
since put me fairly out of countenance by say- 
ing, 'I have known my mistress fifteen years, 
and never saw her fairly out of humour but on 
Chester wall'; it was because he would keep 
Miss Thrale beyond her hour of going to bed 
to walk on the wall, where from the want of 

[63 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



light, I apprehended some accident to her, — 
perhaps to him." Probably nine-year-old "Miss 
Thrale " did not mind being kept beyond her 
hour of going to bed by a stout gentleman who 
was her devoted slave ! 

The next day they entered Wales, dined at 
Mold and came to Llewenni. Mrs. Thrale's 
cousin, Robert Cotton, was living at Llewenni 
Hall, which in 1817, after having been one thou- 
sand years in possession of the family, was torn 
down. At Whitchurch, a few miles away, is an ala- 
baster altar monument to one of the Salusbury's 
who owned this hall. Sir John, or Syr John y 
Bodiau ("Sir John of the Thumbs"). This an- 
cestor of Mrs. Piozzi was not only distinguished 
by two thumbs on either hand, but also by a 
giant's strength. With his bare fist he is sup- 
posed to have slain a white lioness in the Tower 
of London. Since then white lionesses have all 
disappeared. Sir John of the Thumbs also killed 
a mythical beast in a lair below a near-by castle, 
and overthrew a famous giant. Is it any won- 
der that Mrs. Thrale, with such a forefather, 
should sometimes have painted things plus beau 
que le verit'e, and that, even as her ancestor was 
fond of pulling up trees by the roots when he 

[64] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

had nothing better to do, his descendant should 
once in a while give truth a little tug ? 

But if Mrs. Thrale had a distinguished pro- 
genitor, she had an even more distinguished an- 
cestress, for there at Llewenni Hall lived " Mam 
Cymru," the Mother of Wales. This Catherine 
de Berain's first husband was a Salusbury, her 
second husband was Sir Richard Clough. The 
second daughter of the second marriage married 
Salusbury of Bachycraig, and from this marriage 
Mrs. Piozzi was descended. Later, Catherine de 
Berain became the third wife of Maurice Wynne, 
who was her third husband. It is said that on 
the way home from the funeral of her first hus- 
band, Wynne asked her to marry him. She had 
to refuse, however, as Sir Richard Clough had 
asked her on the way to the church. But she 
assured him that she was not superstitious about 
the number 3, and agreed to give Wynne the 
next opportunity. She kept her word. 

When the Welsh used to speak of a rich 
person, they did not say " rich as Croesus " but 
" rich as a Clough." On July thirtieth, John- 
son and the Thrales visited a remarkable house 
built by Sir Richard, the second husband of 
"Mam Cymru." On the thirty-first day they 

[65] 



Gallant Little Wales 



drove to the Cathedral of St. Asaph, once the 
even smaller church of Llanelwy, to which 
Giraldus Cambrensis in his tour in 1 1 88 referred 
as " paupercula." About that time this tiny 
cathedral was changed from wickerwork or 
wood to stone. On the same day they saw the 
Chapel of Llewenni, founded by one of the 
Salusburys, where Johnson was surprised be- 
cause the service, read thrice on Sundays, was 
read only once in English. 

He was dissatisfied not only with the order of 
Welsh services, but also with the behaviour of 
Welsh rivers. On this day he writes: "The 
rivers here are mere torrents which are suddenly 
swelled by the rain to great breadth and great 
violence, but have very little constant stream; 
such are the Clwyd and the Elwy." About 
Welsh rivers Johnson makes a great many re- 
marks. He is as scornful of them as an Ameri- 
can is of the Thames. Mrs. Piozzi says that his 
"ideas of anything not positively large were 
ever mingled with contempt." He asked of one 
of the sharp currents in North Wales, "Has 
this brook e'er a name "? " " Why, dear Sir, this 
is the River Ustrad." " Let us," said Dr. John- 
son, turning to his friend, "jump over it di- 
[66] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

rectly, and show them how an Englishman 
should treat a Welsh river." Johnson was al- 
ways of opinion that when one had seen the 
ocean, cascades were but little things. He used 
to laugh at Shenstone most unmercifully for not 
caring whether there was anything good to eat 
in the streams he was so fond of "As if," 
says Johnson, " one could fill one's belly with 
hearing soft murmurs, or looking at rough 
cascades ! " 

It would be difficult to make a summary of 
all the objects Johnson called " mean " in North 
Wales. Among them were towns, rivers, inns, 
dinners, churches, houses, choirs. It is safe to 
say that the great Doctor could not rid himself 
altogether of English prejudices against the 
Welsh and all things Welsh. George Borrow's 
experience on the summit of Snowdon was not 
at all unusual, except that in this instance an 
Englishman in the presence of English people 
became the champion of the Welsh. Undoubt- 
edly Johnson was influenced in his contempt 
not only by his English feeling, but also by the 
fact that he was a true son of the eighteenth 
century, with all that century's emphasis on 
power, on size, on utility. 

[67 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Yet Johnson was not totally incapable of ap- 
preciating the romantic scenery of Wales. Some 
part of it, the more cultivated, he seems to have 
felt, for on the very next day there is this re- 
cord : " The way lay through pleasant lanes, 
and overlooked a region beautifully diversified 
with trees and' grass." It mortified Mrs. Thrale 
because Mr. Thrale, a lover of landscapes, could 
not enjoy them with the great Doctor, who would 
say, "Never heed such nonsense, a blade of grass 
is always a blade of grass, whether in one coun- 
try or another. Let us, if we do talk, talk about 
something ; men and women are my subject of 
enquiry ; let us see how these differ from those 
we have left behind." However, Johnson was 
certainly not insensible to the beauty of na- 
ture. In describing his emotions at the sight 
of lona, he wrote : " Whatever withdraws us 
from the power of our senses, whatever makes 
the past, the distant, or the future predominate 
over the present, advances us in the dignity 
of thinking beings." In his tour in the Heb- 
rides he welcomed even the inconveniences 
of travelling, such as wind and rain, when they 
meant finer scenery and more pictures for the 
mind. 

[68] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

Much on this same August second was found 
" mean," including Mrs. Thrale's gift to the ro- 
mantic old clerk of the parish church of Bachy- 
craig where Mrs.Thrale's father was buried. The 
day following, on their arrival in Holywell, 
Johnson had to admit that the town was " neither 
very small nor very mean." He was amazed 
and impressed by the yield of water from St. 
Winifred's Well, and the number of mill wheels 
the water turned. But when they went down 
by the stream to see a prospect, Johnson adds 
very specifically that he " had no part " in it. 
He was vastly more interested in some brass and 
copper works, in lafis calaminaris, in pigs of 
copper, and in some ironworks where he saw 
iron half an inch thick "square-cut with shears 
worked by water," and hammers that moved as 
quick " as by the hand." One has a curious feel- 
ing that, were the Doctor suddenly translated 
to this world again, foundries would interest 
him vastly more than any natural panorama. 
In this Johnson was truly a man of his times, 
which were epoch-making because of their new 
interest in the mechanics of industry, their gi- 
gantic industrial impulse. Without a word for 
the singular beauties of Holywell, without refer- 

[69] 



Gallant Little Wales 



ence to the legend of St. Winifred or mention 
of the ruins of the Abbey, he concludes his 
journal for August third : " I then saw wire 
drawn, and gave a shilling. I have enlarged 
my notion, though not being able to see the 
movements, and not having time to peep 
closely, I know less than I might." 

Another feature of the land impressed him 
favourably, the houses of country gentlemen. 
" This country seems full of very splendid houses," 
he notes on August fourth, after visiting a Mr. 
Lloyd's house near Ruthin, where he had been to 
see the castle. He writes quite at length on the 
ruins of Ruthin and ends characteristically, "Only 
one tower had a chimney, so that there was [little] 
commodity of living. It was only a place of 
strength." It was on this day that the keep of the 
castle, when he heard that Mrs. Thrale was a 
native ofNorthWales, told her that his wife had 
been a Welshwoman, and had desired to be 
buried at Ruthin. " So," said the man, " I went 
with the corpse myself, because I thought it 
would be a pleasant journey, and indeed I found 
Ruthin a very beautiful place." 

Two days later they dined at Mr. Myddle- 
ton's, of Gwaenynog, the gentleman who raised 

[70] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

the unwelcome monument to Johnson's memory 
before the Doctor had had a chance to die, and 
while he still considered himself very much alive. 
This memorial is on the site at Gwaenynog 
where Johnson used to stroll up and down. It 
reads : " This spot was often dignified by the pre- 
sence of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., whose moral 
writings, exactly conformable to the precepts 
of Christianity, gave ardour to Virtue and con- 
fidence to Truth." Perhaps it is not strange that 
Johnson was not pleased with the monument. 
He wrote to Mrs. Thrale, "Mr. Myddleton's 
attention looks like an intention to bury me 
alive. I would as willingly see my friend, how- 
ever benevolent and hospitable, quietly inurned. 
Let him think, for the present, of some more 
acceptable memorial." 

To the Doctor death was always an enemy 
who would, he knew, outwit him in the end, a 
terrifying presence against which he struggled. 
"But who can run the race with death?" he 
cries despairingly. This premature memorial 
must have revolted everything in him, for to 
him " the whole of life " was but keeping away 
the thoughts of death. Even a dark road troubled 
him. 

[71 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Leaving Llewenni on August eighteenth, they 
started definitely forward on their journey. They 
passed through Abergele, "a mean little town," 
to Bangor, where they found " a very mean 
inn." Certainly meanness is accumulating in 
Wales ! Johnson had the instinctive contempt 
for things Welsh which so many English people 
hold. But, after finding Lord Bulkely's house 
at Bangor also " very mean," this is the point in 
the great Doctor's journal where the lover of 
Wales may take heart. 

There was one contrivance of the hand and 
mind of man which impressed Dr. Johnson tre- 
mendously. Where such works of the Creator 
as Snowdon, for example, failed, where the mys- 
tery of this land of legend passed him by, 
castles succeeded by virtue of their size, the 
strength of their walls, the completeness of their 
equipment. In Denbigh, Johnson had eagerly 
tried to trace the lines of that " prodigious pile " 
of a castle. So much of the comment we get in 
this neglected Welsh journal and in Johnson's 
other writings seems to summarize itself in two 
words : size and power. He told Mrs. Piozzi to 
get a book on gardening, since she would stay 
in the country, feed the chickens, and starve 

[72] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

her intellect, " and learn," he said, " to raise the 
largest turnips, and to breed the biggest fowls." 
It was in vain that Mrs. Piozzi told him that 
the goodness of these dishes did not depend 
upon their size. 

From Beaumaris Castle to Carnarvon there 
is a crescendo of praise, ending in the memor- 
able words about Carnarvon : " To survey this 
place would take much time. I did not think 
there had been such buildings ; it surpassed my 
ideas." Of Beaumaris, Johnson wrote : " The 
Castle is a mighty pile. . . . This Castle cor- 
responds with all the representatives of romanc- 
ing narratives. Here is not wanting the private 
passage, the dark cavity, the deep dungeon, or 
the lofty tower. We did not discover the well. 
This is the most compleat view that I have yet 
had of an old Castle." And then came four last 
delighted words, " It had a moat." 

Nor was the next day, August twentieth, less 
of a success. After meeting with some friends 
they went to see the castle in Carnarvon, which 
Johnson describes as " an edifice of stupendous 
magnitude and strength ; it has in it all that we 
observed at Beaumaris, and much greater di- 
mensions, many of the smaller rooms floored 

[73] 



Gallant Little Wales 



with stone are entire; of the larger rooms, the 
beams and planks are all left; this is the state 
of all buildings left to time. We mounted the 
Eagle Tower by one hundred and sixty-nine 
steps, each of ten inches. We did not find the 
well ; nor did I trace the moat ; but moats there 
were, I believe, to all castles on the plain, which 
not only hindered access, but prevented mines. 
We saw but a very small part of the mighty 
ruin, and in all these old buildings, the subter- 
raneous works are concealed by the rubbish." 

When Johnson and the Thrales were on their 
way from Llewenni to Bangor, they passed 
through Conway. The Doctor was much exer- 
cised in Conway because of the plight of an 
Irish gentlewoman and her young family who 
could get no beds to sleep in, but the one fea- 
ture in this rare old town which might have 
impressed him, its castle, he did not notice in 
the journal. Built by the same architect who 
planned Carnarvon, it has much of its grace and 
is in some respects even more beautifully placed. 
With its machicolated towers, its vast banquet- 
ing-hall. Queen Eleanor's oratory, and the river 
washing at its foundations, it is still a wonder- 
ful old pile. On the return trip Johnson makes 

[74] 



Dr. Johnson s Tour of North Wales 

a short, practical note to the effect that the 
castle afforded them nothing new, and that if it 
was larger than that of Beaumaris, it was smaller 
than that of Carnarvon. Carnarvon was the 
largest, and the Doctor was not to be weaned 
from it any more than from the idea that Mrs. 
Thrale ought to raise the largest turnips. 

The day following this memorable inspection 
of Carnarvon Castle, they dined with Sir Thomas 
Wynne and his Lady. Johnson's comment was 
brief, — "the dinner mean. Sir Thomas civil, 
his Lady nothing." It would seem that Lady 
Wynne failed to recognize the greatness of her 
visitor, and, accustomed to a distinguished re- 
ception, the great man's vanity was hurt. After- 
wards he made remarks about Sir Thomas's 
Lady, in which she was compared to " sour small 
beer " and " run tea." Of a lady in Scotland he 
had, said "that she resembled a dead nettle; 
were she alive she would sting." 

This mean dinner and, we presume, its 
meaner hostess were but a sorry prelude to a 
melancholy journey which the party had to 
take to Mrs. Thrale's old home at Bodvel. 
They found nothing there as in Mrs. Thrale's 
childhood ; the walk was cut down, the pond 

[75] 



Gallant Little Wales 



was dry. The near-by churches which Mrs. 
Thrale held by impropriation Johnson thought 
"mean and neglected to a degree scarcely 
imaginable. They have no pavement, and the 
earth is full of holes. The seats are rude 
benches; the altars have no rails. One of them 
has a breach in the roof On the desk, I think, 
of each lay a folio Welsh Bible of the black 
letter, which the curate cannot easily read." 
Over one hundred and thirty years later it was 
that I made the tour, which I have described 
for you, of these Welsh churches of early found- 
ation. Mysterious, desolate, dilapidated old 
places they are ; in comparison with the ugly, 
comfortable nonconformist chapels, spectacles 
for the prosperous to jeer at. 

Mrs. Piozzi tells a story which shows that 
the great Doctor brought terror to the hearts of 
the Welsh parsons. " It was impossible not to 
laugh at the patience Dr. Johnson showed, when 
a Welsh parson of mean abilities, though a good 
heart, struck with reverence at the sight of Dr. 
Johnson, whom he had heard of as the great- 
est man living, could not find any words to an- 
swer his enquiries concerning a motto around 
somebody's arms which adorned a tombstone 

[76] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

in Ruabon Churchyard. If I remember right, 
the words were, — 

Heb Dw, Heb Dym (Without God, without all) 
Dw o' diggon (God is all sufficient).^ 

And though of not very difficult construction, 
the gentleman seemed wholly confounded, and 
unable to explain them ; till Dr. Johnson, having 
picked out the meaning by Httle and Httle, said 
to the man, ''Heb is a preposition, I beheve, 
Sir, is it not ? ' My countryman, recovering some 
spirits upon the sudden question, cried out, 'So 
I humbly presume, Sir,' very comically." 

About Bodvel they found the Methodist 
" prevalent," which could not have been a pleas- 
ant circumstance to Johnson. With noncon- 
formity the great Doctor had no sympathy. 
Boswell says that Johnson thought them " too 
sanguine in their accounts of their success among 
savages, and that much of what they tell is not 
to be believed. He owned that the Methodists 
had done good; had spread religious impres- 
sions among the vulgar part of mankind ; but, 
he said, they had great bitterness against other 

^ Heb Duw, Heb Dym (Without God, Nothing), Duw 
a* diggon (God and plenty) would be more correct Welsh 
and a better translation. 

[77] 



Gallant L,ittle Wales 



Christians, and that he never could get a Meth- 
odist to explain in what he excelled others." 

This unhappy day they concluded suitably 
by going to Pwllheli, " a mean old town at the 
extremity of the country," where they bought 
something by which to remember its meanness. 
Pwllheli is still mean, but in a different way, 
for it has become a noisy watering-resort from 
which the quiet traveller longs to escape at the 
first moment to quiet Abersoch or to Llanen- 
gan or Aberdaron, where "trippers" cease from 
troubling and tourists are at rest. 

Nowadays, even the most breathless will grant 
Snowdon a few words of praise — praise for its 
lakes, awe for its rock-strewn valleys like the 
valley of the shadow of death. Of the two lakes, 
Llyn Beris and Llyn Padarn, which receive the 
waters on the northern slope of Snowdon, John- 
son did not think much, for he complained that 
" the boat is always near one bank or the other." 
As for Snowdon itself, the record is, "We 
climbed with great labour. I was breathless and 
harassed." There is no word for all that is ro- 
mantic or awe-inspiring, not an exclamation for 
the summit to which have mounted king, poet, 
priest, bard, wise men, through countless ages — 

[78] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

only a record of Queenie's goats, " one hundred 
and forty-nine, I think." Mr. Thrale, Queenie's 
father, was near-sighted and could not see the 
goats, so he had promised the child a penny for 
every one she showed him. Dr. Johnson, the 
devoted friend of Queenie, kept the account. 

On their way back to the English border 
again, they passed through Bangor, where John- 
son must have been happy in finding that " the 
quire is mean ! " On August twenty-eighth they 
were once more with hospitable Mr. Myddle- 
ton. Here they stayed for over a week, and the 
journal contains, among other things, a long 
note about a Mr. Griffiths. The addition of the 
name of his estate or village fails to identify him 
now ; looking for a Griffiths or a Jones in Wales, 
even a particular Jones or Griffiths, is like 
looking for a needle in a haystack. Perhaps the 
present limitation to a dozen patronymics is a 
blessing for courts of law, but it is baffling for 
the curious -minded man. The historian finds 
the old Welsh John ap Robert ap David ap 
Griffith ap Meredith ap David ap Vauchan ap 
Blethyn ap Griffith ap Meredith, and so on for 
a dozen more " aps," easier for purposes of iden- 
tification. 

[79] 



Gallant Little Wales 



On their homeward way Johnson was enthu- 
siastic about Wrexham and its " large and mag- 
nificent " church, one of the Seven Wonders of 
Wales. On the seventh of September they 
came to Chirk Castle, but I cannot find that 
they went into this residence, a place which un- 
doubtedly would have delighted Johnson more 
on account of its " commodity of living " and 
solid grandeur than because one of its heiresses 
was the unamiable Warwick Dowager who had 
married Addison. They left for Shrewsbury 
after they had viewed the little waterfall of 
Pistyll Rhaiadr, where the Doctor remarked 
only upon its height and the copiousness of its 
fall. If Johnson had been an up-to-date Cam- 
brian railway tourist, he could not have en- 
tered and left North Wales in more approved 
style, for he came in by way of Chester and left 
by way of Shrewsbury. Safely out of Wales 
they journeyed homeward through Worcester, 
probably Birmingham, and Oxford. On Sep- 
tember twenty-fourth there is this simple record : 
"We went home." 

It is to be remembered that on this tour 
Johnson lacked the companionship of the faith- 
ful Boswell. Yet the scantiness of the diary and 

[80] 




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t. 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

its critical attitude cannot be accounted for 
wholly on this ground, but were due, I think, 
far more to the fact that the Doctor was thor- 
oughly English in prejudice. Tobias Smollett's 
feeling in " Humphrey Clinker," for example, 
is even more English and uncomplimentary. All 
through his tour of the Hebrides, though he 
denounced Scotland and all things Scottish, 
called the Scotch liars and their country naked, 
yet the Doctor had an uneasy conviction of 
their superiority. As far as Wales was con- 
cerned, he simply did not consider this country 
of Arthur, of bard and of poet, this country of 
an indestructible nationaHsm, worthy his serious 
interest. Had he lived in Shakespeare's day his 
concern would have been much greater, his re- 
spect more solicitous. 

On the first visit to Mr. Myddleton the pre- 
servation of the Welsh language had been dis- 
cussed. In his journal for that date Dr. Johnson 
wrote, " Myddleton is the only man, who, in 
Wales, has talked to me of literature." He was 
visiting people who, almost universally, were 
supremely indifferent to Wales and all things 
Welsh. In other words, he was visiting the 
upper or ruling classes. It is not so many years 

[ 8i 3 



Gallant Little Wales 



ago that the children of the gentry were still 
not allowed to learn Welsh for fear their Eng- 
lish accent might be spoiled. Now, happily, 
they are taught Welsh, a fact which not only 
improves the relationship between them and 
the working classes, but also is contributing 
generously to a revival of all that is best in 
Welsh song and literature. Even a prince of the 
blood royal learns Welsh and speaks it. 

Dr. Johnson was in Wales at a time when 
the intellectual interests of Welshmen were 
most flagging, that is, just before the introduc- 
tion of the Welsh Sunday Schools which, with 
their educational rather than exclusively re- 
ligious function, gave impulse to a period of 
modern Welsh literature. Not only in chron- 
ology but also in importance, the establish- 
ment of the Welsh Sunday School must take 
precedence of Lady Charlotte Guest's transla- 
tions of the " Mabinogion." Yet what Macpher- 
son's " Ossian " did for Scotland in the seventies 
in arousing interest. Lady Guest did for Wales 
in 1838. It is possible, if one can presuppose 
the impossible, that with these translations in 
hand Dr. Johnson's journal would have been 
very different. However, one is fearful that, forti- 

[82 ] 



Dr* Johnson s Tour of North Wales 

fied even with Lady Charlotte's beautiful trans- 
lations, there would have been passages in the 
authentic Welsh "Mabinogion" as angrily re- 
jected by him as Macpherson's imposture was. 
Johnson said that he never could get the mean- 
ing of an Erse song explained to him. He asked 
a young lady who had sung such a song what 
it was about, and she replied that it was for the 
entertainment of the company. He explained 
that it was its meaning he could not under- 
stand, whereupon she answered that it was a love 
song. And that was all the intelligence, Johnson 
said, that he could get. 

There was strong probability, as a Welsh 
traveller in 1682 expressed it, of Welsh being 
"English'd out of Wales, as Latin was barbar- 
ously Goth'd out of Italy." From the time of 
the Great Rebellion, however, the condition of 
the Welsh language began to improve, and it 
is possible greatly to overrate the difficulties 
with which Johnson met in coming to know the 
life of the people. Impatiently he had exclaimed, 
"Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; 
men and women are my subject of enquiry ; let 
us see how these differ from those we have left 
behind." But from any evidence in his journal 

[83 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Johnson did not consider it worth his while to 
discover how much the Welsh really do differ 
from the English. The visible physical fact with 
which he was confronted was the dark-haired, 
dark-eyed, dark-complexioned Welshman of 
medium stature, very Spanish-looking, some- 
times almost Oriental. What he heard were 
voices quite distinct from the English, quiet and 
pure in enunciation. What he must have felt 
— if he felt the Welsh as distinct, except in in- 
feriority — was a race as different as the south 
is from the north, sensitive, imaginative, excit- 
able, deeply impressionable to everything that is 
beautiful, as capable of the "howl" as the Irish, 
yet more critical, of an intellectual independ- 
ence which makes Roman Catholicism unwel- 
come to the Welsh, with a shrewdness that is 
the logic of success in money-getting, a captive 
race with minds which can never be servile. 
Yet in a letter to Bos well announcing that he 
had visited five out of the six counties of North 
Wales, Dr. Johnson wrote: "Wales is so little 
different from England, that it offers nothing to 
the speculation of the traveller." Johnson was 
capable, too, of taunting Boswell with the sterility 
of Scotland. He had a certain strain of contrari- 

[84] 



Dr. yohnsons Tour of North Wales 

ness in him, " tonic " some call it, which made 
him emphasize the undesirable features of a 
country or a personality. Three years after this 
journey, forgetting even his interest in castles, 
he was able to say : "Except the woods oi Bachy- 
craigh^ what is there in Wales that can fill the 
hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of 
curiosity?" 



V 
Welsh Folk- Lore 

Many and attractively full of poetry are the su- 
perstitions still living in the solitary Welsh hills. 
One day I encountered a hillside woman while 
we were looking for a hilltop church. She was in 
great distress, breathless and flapping her apron. 
Now there is a Welsh legend that bees were 
created in paradise, and her bees were running 
away. Apparently, this worldly, heartless creature 
had no intention, if an apron could prevent it, 
of allowing her bees to go back to heaven. Fairy- 
land is Cambria in Wales, if you will let me 
juggle with my words in this fashion, for I do 
not know how to express it otherwise. And 
yearning for continued love and life, even with 
the bees, is the breath of the phantom and spirit 
world called "Fairyland." Although the instinct 
of faith in the supernatural may be primitive 
and the Welsh of to-day highly civilized, yet 
supernatural belief is still ineradicated among 
the people. Their childish tales, often so hard to 
understand, are full of a haunting race life. Con- 
[86] 



Welsh Folk- Lore 



viction, for example, that fairies are the souls 
of dead mortals, mortals not good enough for 
heaven or bad enough for hell, — at least the 
thought is a gentle one, and as such not to be 
despised. And to their gentle masters the fairies 
themselves seem to have given an uncommon 
devotion. If fairies are troublesome, one can 
sometimes get rid of them by changing one's 
residence. But not so with these Welsh fairies ! 
Like the family servant for whom every one 
longs, they stick closer than a brother. Even 
going into England will not drive Welsh fairies 
away from those they love. Matthew Arnold 
should have considered this when he was study- 
ing the Celtic temperament, and denouncing it 
for its inconstancy, for the essence of all that is 
Celtic is the Welsh fairy. 

One is a little of the opinion of the youth, 
who, when he first saw the Lady of the Lake, 
thought she was a goose. That is what I thought 
of my first fairies, and still think of them. Yet, 
in this day and generation, it is something to 
have seen a fairy at all ! It was dusk, and I had 
come through a tiny hill village, where white 
cottages were gleaming in the dark, and light 
shining on garden walls. It was so quiet that I 

[87] 



Gallant Little Wales 



could hear pine needles dropping on the ground, 
and the wind talking in the branches of the rain, 
still miles distant upon the sea. The noise of a 
tardy bumblebee, hurrying homeward in the 
dark, fairly boomed in my ears, and the sounds 
of shale rock slipping down the hillside came 
and went mysteriously. Through lighted win- 
dows I caught glimpses of evening comfort, of 
a bright fire glowing with peat, whose aroma 
was everywhere on the soft air, of dressers and 
tridarns, brave with countless ornaments, of a 
grandfather's clock whose wise old face shone 
with light, of children's heads about the supper 
table. 

But a higher hill was calling me, and an ad- 
venture of whose nature I had not even dreamed. 
I turned off the road by a Wesleyan chapel 
and mounted a steep path. Up, up, up I went 
around the side of a green hill, sometimes listen- 
ing to the night stir of the birds, sometimes 
startled by a brown rabbit, leaping for cover. Out 
beyond, the mountains of Snowdonia were piled 
height on height, all washed in sepia depth 
upon a sky, moonless, but brilliant with stars. 
I hastened, for I was eager to reach the pine- 
crowned summit. Up there would be no sound 
[88] 



Welsh Folk-Lore 



except the wind in the trees, and once in a while 
some homely noises from the villages in the 
valley below : the sharp bark of a dog, the bleat- 
ing of a lamb, the closing of some cottage door, 
a resonant " good-night." 

Once on the hilltop, I lay down to rest, list- 
ening to the soft flight and hooting of some 
young owl, and feeling the grass cool and deep 
to my head and hands. As I lay there, eyes half 
closed, I heard some one coming up the path. 
Nearer and nearer drew uncertain footsteps and 
the tapping of a cane over loose stones. I sat up 
quickly, and there in the dark was an old woman, 
a cane in one hand, a basket in the other. Some- 
thing cried piteously from the basket and I 
asked what it was. The old crone said that it 
was a kitten, and showed me a sack in which 
something else, tied up, squirmed and mewed. 
But she did not open the bag. After a due 
amount of greeting and curtseying, the old wo- 
man went on. I noticed that she kept looking 
back as she followed the path over the crown 
of the hill. 

My attention was diverted from her by the 
approach of more footsteps. It was a boy, a very 
large boy, and in his hand I could clearly see a 

[89] 



Gallant Little Wales 



school-bag, ridiculously small for such a big lad, 
in which he, too, carried something. Behind him 
walked a huge dog, feathered on back and legs 
so heavily that his shaggy hair trailed on the 
ground. I heard something cry from the little 
bag, and I asked what it was. The lad replied 
in Welsh that it was a kitten. I could see him 
smiling as he stood his ground. Except in Welsh 
there was nothing further for me to do. Under 
the most favourable circumstances it is a great 
deal to do anything at all in Welsh, and with 
my heart beating rapidly and my tongue grow- 
ing dry, I did not feel that I could do anything 
more in any language. We were silent while 
the little thing kept on "miaowing," and this 
boy, like an ordinary boy, hitched about for a 
few moments, kicking stones from the path, and 
then went on, followed by the dog. 

Erect and uneasy, I continued to sit up. Just 
as dog and boy were out of sight I heard some 
one else stumbling up the path and a faint 
kitten-like noise. I began to be afraid of those 
kittens being carried one after one over this 
desolate hilltop. It suggested a little the en- 
chantments in the " Mabinogion," only in the 
" Mabinogion " mice and not kittens played the 

[90] 



Welsh Folk-Lore 



leading part. I got up and fled before this ex- 
perience should have a chance to become the 
beginning of some enchantment. But already 
I felt as if a spell were upon me, and even when 
I was quite far away from the kitteny place, I 
was still in a strange condition of excitement. 
One feels a natural dislike for any sort of hilltop 
enchantments, and I did. 

I was making considerable speed in my Welsh- 
soled boots and feeling more like an ordinary 
person, when the path took a sharp turn and I 
saw something strange in front of me. Down 
below ran the road, hard enough to be a fact, 
and lighted by the clear glow of the stars. 
If only one could always be sure of what is 
coming in this world, such a turning as I had 
taken would be like Keats*s beauty, " a joy for- 
ever." But alas ! close at my own right hand, 
very distinct, unmistakably clear, rose something 
my eyes had never met before : a chimney with 
no house attached to it. And on the treeless 
meadow in front of this apparition I saw the old 
woman leaning on her stick and the boy sitting 
beside his dog. Clearly the spell had worked. 
But how I struggled out from under this en^ 
chantment is another story. 

[91 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



The least credulous may look at fairy and 
goblin food in the woods and fields, and their 
gloves, the fox-glove, growing beside the road. 
And their animals, their sheep, their horses, their 
dogs are visible on many a dim hillside. The 
Welsh speak of these little people as the fair 
folk or family — "y Tylwyth Teg." And well 
do they deserve the name. Sometimes they are 
spoken of as the fair folk of the wood or the 
fair folk of the mine. In gowns of green, blue, 
white, and scarlet they dance on moonlit nights. 
If they like you they will bestow blessings on 
you, and are frequently called " mothers' bless- 
ings" because mothers are glad to have such 
little ones. But if one speaks unkindly of them, 
one will get into trouble. And here, whether one 
be talking of fairies or of mortals, who cannot 
always avenge themselves as readily as fairies, is 
a lesson worth remembering. 

Elves, according to the Welsh, — I have seen 
only a picture of one drawn by a Welsh miner, 
— also live on goblin food and wear foxgloves 
when they have any particularly hard work to 
do. The Queen of the Elves is none other than 
the Shakespearean fairy spoken of by Mercutio, 
who comes 

[pet] 



mEmmw^ 










1^, 



^^r ;g 




IVelsh Folk' Lore 



" In shape no bigger than an agate stone 
On the forefinger of an alderman." 

No one who has not seen a fairy can have any 
idea how difficult it is to draw the line between 
history and story. The difficulties of the folk- 
lorist are as nothing, — for his is the scientific 
spirit, — compared with the trouble the real 
fairy hunter has in the open. Nowadays, of 
course, no one believes everything or possibly 
anything he is told. But in times past mankind 
seems to have been gifted with a more intimate 
faith in and knowledge of some things than we 
have to-day. For example, people used to know 
Satan better and were more afraid of him. An 
honest Welsh farmer saw him lying across the 
road with his head on one wall and his tail on 
the other. The Devil was moaning horribly, 
which in this uncomfortable position would not 
be strange for any one. 

In criticism of Welsh fairies there is one thing 
to be said. They not only have a rather prac- 
tical-joking sort of humour, but they also have 
very little sense of equity. A man may do his 
best for them, and then they repay him in the 
end by a trick. A Welsh piper was coming 
home in the gray of the evening, and had to 

[93] 



Gallant Little Wales 



cross a little running stream, from which he saw 
only the shadowed hillside and heard only the 
voice of the wind. But when he had travelled 
beyond the hill, music became audible, and, 
turning, instead of the knoll he had been look- 
ing at, there was a great castle with lights blaz- 
ing and music playing and the sound of dancing 
feet. He went back and was caught in the pro- 
cession coming out from its doors and taken in 
to pipe to them. He piped for a day or so, but 
he was anxious to return to his people, and the 
fairies seemed to understand. They said they 
would let him go if he would play a favourite 
tune. He played his best, they danced fast and 
furiously. And at last he was set free on the 
dark hillside, with only the voice of the wind for 
company. He went home hastily, but when he 
entered his father's house no one knew him. 
An old man awoke from a doze by the fire, 
and said that he had heard, when a boy, of a 
piper who had gone away on a quiet evening 
and never come back again. That was over a 
hundred years ago. 

Perhaps there is no reason why the fairies, as 
well as poor mortals, should not be allowed a 
natural and happy alternation between badness 

[94] 



Welsh Folk- Lore 



and goodness. Metaphorically speaking, they 
are not the only creatures who steal money and 
butter and cheese, and who whisk away help- 
less, unbaptized infants. Doubtless a New Eng- 
land Mather — those early New England Ma- 
thers were hard on babies — would say that an 
infant who remained unbaptized long enough to 
be discovered by a fairy deserved to be stolen. 
Such an idea could have flourished only in 
New England. As if it were not bad enough 
to face the-survival-of-the-fittest test in this life 
without carrying it over into heaven ! I, for one, 
am not disposed to find fault with the fairies 
when, as happened in Beddgelert, they led a man 
into beautiful lodgings. To know what a tempta- 
tion a beautiful apartment might become, one 
must have lived, as I have, in that little moun- 
tain-cupped village. When the man awoke in 
the morning after a peaceful night's rest, he was 
sleeping on a swamp with a clump of rushes 
for his pillow. If he had been a nervous, sleep- 
less, modern man, instead of finding fault as he 
did, he would have been grateful for the night's 
sound rest and forthwith tried the swamp again. 
After this there would have been a " Swamp 
Cure for Insomnia." 

[95] 



Gallant Little Whales 



There are ghosts, too, in Wales, but they are 
rather spiritless creatures, much easier to catch 
and not so tricksy as the fairies. Nor do they 
select prickly furze and stony hilltops as their 
hiding-places. But on the whole they are diffi- 
cult to subdue, especially the farm ghosts. 
While the servants are busy making the butter, 
the ghost or spirit frequently throws something 
unclean into the milk or sends the pans spin- 
ning around like mad. In one farm the farmer 
offered a reward of five pounds to any one who 
would lay their particularly lively spirit. Sev- 
eral people tried it, including an aged priest in 
whose face the impertinent ghost waved a wo- 
man's bonnet. Finally, the Established Church 
being unable to cope with this sprightly situa- 
tion, an Independent minister from Llanarmon 
coaxed the ghost into the barn. There the spirit, 
still unsubdued, turned into a lion, a mastiff, 
and other ferocious beasts, but in no incarnation 
could it do any harm to the Independent Grif- 
fiths. It became discouraged, and the minister 
persuaded the poor thing to appear in the form 
of a fly. Perhaps in this incarnation the wretched 
thing still had hopes of revenge. However, the 
intrepid Griffiths was too much for it, and it 

[96] 



Welsh Folk- Lore 



was captured in a tobacco box and borne off, 
never to trouble the farmer any more. 

The death portents in Cambria reveal all the 
strangeness and lawlessness of the Celtic imagina- 
tion. No one who does not know the Welsh 
hills, who has not been on them day after day, 
can feel the significance of these death portents. 
One must have travelled on the top and edge of 
the Welsh mountain world to understand, — 
have looked out upon a sea of hills gray and bar- 
ren in their utter colourlessness, and down upon 
valleys like the valley of the shadow of death. 
There abyss and altitude are alike full of ter- 
rors, of mist before which mind and step falter, 
of an Unknown which presses home in bodily 
anguish, which distorts the vision and strikes 
upon the ear with the outcry of bewildered 
souls. It is not strange, then, that the Welsh 
have the most horrible of banshees. It is known 
as the Gwrach y Rhybin, the old hag of the mist; 
and a Cyhyraeth which moans dolefully in the 
night but is never seen; and a Tolaeth which 
groans or sings or saws, or tramps with its feet, 
and is also unseen. And there are, besides, the 
"Dogs of Hell" and the "Dogs of the Sky" 
and the "Corpse Candle" and the "Goblin 
[97] 



Gallant Litile Wales 



Funeral," — all of them portents of death. Sev- 
eral years ago I came very near seeing one of 
these portentous dogs. I was on a treeless up- 
land pasture, rich with ruby like a deep agate, 
with lavender, flecked with emerald-green as 
musk is freaked with brown ; purple, pink, and 
opalescent in the sunshine that came and went. 
There were black sheep and white in that pas- 
ture, I remember, and some little lambs that 
straddled with surprise. One rose, stretching and 
curling its tail with the delicious energy of wak- 
ing from sleep. I looked down what seemed like 
a particoloured gulf of greensward into valleys 
where men and cattle had become dots in size, 
and up to more fern and heather and altitudes 
where the curlew cried. It was as I looked up 
that I saw an impressively large black dog that 
went through an impossibly small sheep-hole in 
a sheep-wall. But a wisp of mist came over 
the Welsh mountainside, and one never makes 
an effort to see that sort of thing or to run after 
it. Hunting rollicking elves and lightfoot fairies 
is quite a different matter I 

One of the most beautiful legends in the lolo 
Manuscripts is the story of one of these death 
portents. There was a lord rich in houses and 

[98] 



Welsh Folk- Lore 



land and gold. Every luxury of life was his for 
the asking. One night he heard a voice cry out 
distinctly three times, " The greatest and richest 
man of this parish shall perish to-night." He 
was aware that there was no other man so great 
or rich as he, and he sent for the physician and 
prepared to die. But the night passed and day 
came and he still lived. At sunrise he heard the 
bell tolling and knew that some one must have 
died, and he sent to enquire who it was. It was 
an old blind beggar who had asked for charity 
at the lord's gate and been refused. Then this 
great lord saw that the voice had come as a 
warning to him, that his riches were as nothing 
in comparison with the treasure and wealth 
which the blind man had in the kingdom of 
heaven. He accepted the warning and relieved 
all who were poor or in need. When he died, 
angels were heard to sing him a welcome, and 
after his death he was buried, as he had asked 
to be, in the blind beggar's grave. 

Of hags and witches there used to be far too 
many in Wales. Shakespeare tells all one needs 
to know of them. For some reasons, hidden to 
us, he had peculiarly intimate and extensive 
information concerning Celtic folk-lore. Mac- 

[99] 



Gallant Little Wales 



beth, speaking of witches, says, " I have learned 
by the perfectest report, they have more in them 
than mortal knowledge. When I burned in de- 
sire to question them further, they made them- 
selves air, into which they vanished." These 
witches did not hesitate to throw even portions 
of human beings into seething cauldrons : — 

" Round about the cauldron go ; 
In the poisoned entrails throw." 

They threw in other things, too, as the third 
witch tells us, — 

" Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf. 
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf 
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, 
Root of hemlock digged i' the dark, 
Liver of blaspheming Jew, 
Gall of goat, and slips of yew 
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse, 
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips." 

In Wales the knowledge which witches pos- 
sessed they did not use for the good of others, 
but for their hurt; they tormented children and 
animals, they plagued the hard-working and in- 
dustrious, and upset the Welsh household. In 
Cambria there are witches unlike any I have 

[ lOO ] 



Welsh Folk-Lore 



ever heard of, witches that will cause cows to 
sit down like cats before the fire. No wonder 
the Welsh farmer keeps his Bible handy in the 
kitchen chest, and runs for it post-haste, to read 
his seated cow a chapter and unwitch her ! No 
wonder that with such witches conjurors are 
needed, — if for no other reason, then to unseat 
the cows ; and that country folk pluck the snap- 
dragon to protect themselves from these hags ! 
No wonder the peasants cross their doors, even 
to this day in isolated districts, to shield them- 
selves, and that they keep horseshoes and 
churchyard earth to preserve their cottages from 
spells ! 

No matter how he fumbled the English fairies, 
Shakespeare never made any mistake with the 
Welsh. He understood what "mab" meant, 
— that it meant a little thing, — just as "mab- 
cath" in Welsh means a kitten, or "mab- 
inogi," the singular of " mabinogion," means a 
tale told to the little ones. No one who has not 
seen a fairy can have any idea how difficult it is 
to draw the line between history and story. That 
some of the fairies seen on the way home from 
fairs and from patriotic Eisteddfodau — Welsh 
national festivals of poetry and song — are due 
[ loi ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



to ale, cannot be disputed. It is commonly said 
that the Methodists are driving the fairies out 
of Cambria. These nonconformists are usually 
teetotallers. However, the real fairy is still in 
Wales, and if you do not believe me, all I can 
say is, that you must go to Wales and prove 
that I am v^rong. But perhaps it v^ould be well 
before you take the journey to look at your 
foot, for if you find you have not a foot that 
water runs under, it is best for you not to go. 
So runs the ancient proverb, and without that 
lucky foot no fairy shall you see. 

There is only one thing that can possibly 
counteract the lack of a requisite instep for those 
who desire to see fairies, and that is eating a 
good deal of cheese. I do not know why this is, 
but I do know that as far back as one can go, 
much further back than Giraldus Cambrensis 
or even Taliessin or the archest of the arch- 
druids, Welsh rarebit and roasted cheese have 
been the very bread of Cymric diet. There is a 
story in John Rastell's " Hundred Mery Talys," 
printed in the sixteenth century, which shows 
that before Shakespeare came to elucidate the 
Welsh fairy, this question of cheese and the 
Welsh had been duly considered: "I fynde 

[ I02] 



Welsh Folk'Lore 



wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde 
Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of 
hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered 
many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen 
with small deseruynge; at whych tyme there 
was in heuen a great companye of Welchmen, 
whyche with crakynge and babelynge troubled 
all the other. Wherefore God sayde to saynte 
Peter that he was wery of them, and that he 
wold fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome 
Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente 
you, that shall be done. Wherefore Saynt Peter 
wente out of heuen gates and cried with a loud 
voice Cause bohe (caws pob), that is as moche 
to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the 
Welchemen herynge, ranne out of heuen a great 
pace. And when Saynt Peter saw them all out, 
he suddenly wente into Heuen, and locked the 
dore, and so sparred all the Welchmen out." 

Undoubtedly among everything Welsh, even 
in literature, cheese is the " Open Sesame." It 
is encountered in " Mabinogion " romance and 
beauty, which is the same thing as to say cheese 
among the Welsh ! Is there any other folk-lore 
in the history of the world in which cheese plays 
so important a r61e % It might in German folk- 

[ 103 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



lore, but the fact is that it does not. Bread, milk, 
the juice of the grape, but cheese? No, that is 
lifted into the realm of imagination and of a 
world-classic only in Cambria. Again Shake- 
speare showed his surprisingly accurate know- 
ledge of the Celt when FalstafF exclaims, 
" Heaven defend me from that Welsh Fairy, 
lest he transform me to a piece of cheese ! " 



V 



VI 

The City of the Prince of Wales 

From the heart of Snowdon, some thirteen miles 
or more, on roads gray with altitudes of rock, 
green with shining hillside pastures dotted with 
white sheep, and crossed by rushing streams, 
we walked down to Carnarvon. From the rocky 
heights behind it, this city of the Prince of 
Wales — the great castle pile, the castle walls 
enclosing the roofs of many buildings — ex- 
tends to the edge of the sea, where the boom 
of a sailing-vessel swinging around might easily 
touch the castle wall. And beyond are the 
ships, the Island of Anglesey, Mona, beloved 
in all Welsh hearts, peaceful and fertile, with 
the clouds above. 

It was tranquil, luxuriant, established, un- 
shaken by anything that Time had been able 
to do. There still were the walls strong to de- 
fend; the ships from the sea, and cottage chim- 
neys symbol of many an ingle nook, of quiet 
firesides, of homely comforts, of beloved house- 
hold faces, of young joy and ancient peace. 

[ 105 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



"Caer Seint yn Arfonl" "Caer ar Fon," 
Carnarvon, meaning the stronghold opposite 
Mona or Anglesey. "Caer," the fortress, the 
station, where in Welsh legend, Elen, the great 
Welsh road-maker, was sought and won by the 
Emperor Maximus, — history this, or tradition, 
which makes the thirteenth century and its 
Edwards and its castles seem but as the children 
of yesterday. I thought of the description of the 
old city in the "Dream of Maxen Wledig," the 
dream of Maximus, the tyrant, in the "Mabino- 
gion," one of the classics of the world and the 
classic of Welsh literature. In that dream what 
did that Roman Emperor see but what we now 
saw'? "Valleys he saw, and steeps, and rocks 
of wondrous height, and rugged precipices, 
never yet saw he the like. And thence he be- 
held an island in the sea facing this rugged land. 
And between him and this land was a country 
of which the plain was as large as the sea, the 
mountain as vast as the wood. And from the 
mountain he saw a river that flowed through 
the land and fell into the sea. And at the mouth 
of the river he beheld a castle, the fairest that 
man ever saw, and the gate of the castle was 
open, and he went into the castle." 
[ io6] 



The City of the Prince of Wales 

Probably "Helen of the Roads" is the legend- 
ary form which the power of Rome has taken 
in Wales. On either side of the mountains 
two roads run their straight course from south 
to north, roads that were marked by camps in 
strategic places and by Roman houses of stone 
in the sunshiny reaches of the hillsides. Rome 
is still everywhere in Wales : the way it thinks 
in politics, its speech, its literature, — and no- 
where more beautifully than in the "Dream of 
Maxen Wledig." The Britons were in the sorry 
plight of having to choose between enemies ; 
and of the two, Roman or heathen invader, the 
Romans were the more friendly and beneficent, 
for the wild birds of the heathen carried only 
fire on their wings, and alighted on the ripe 
grain to burn it, but the Romans maintained 
order and conferred power. There in this most 
ancient city of Segontium are still the walls of 
the Roman town as well as the more recent 
walls of the castle town, and a remain which 
suggests a Roman hypocaust ; there coins and 
other fragments of this ancient empire are con- 
stantly being found. There the body of the 
father of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, 
was discovered in the reign of Edward I. And 

[ 107 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Edward, brutal and practical though he was, 
had it interred with pomp and honour in the 
church. 

The very size and strength of Carnarvon 
Castle as it still stands shows how important 
strategically Edward thought the town. That 
Roman stronghold which was there before the 
present castle must have been beautiful, too, if 
in the legend of "Maxen Wledig" we have 
recollection of what it was like. Both in the 
dream and with the messengers whom the Em- 
peror sent, they traversed the land until they 
came to Snowdon. "Behold," said the mes- 
sengers, " the rugged land that our master saw." 
And then they went forward until they saw 
Anglesey, and Aber Sain, and a castle at the 
mouth of the river. "And in the castle he saw 
a fair hall, of which the roof seemed to be all 
gold, the walls of the hall seemed to be entirely 
of glittering precious gems, the doors all seemed 
to be of gold. Golden seats he saw in the hall, 
and silver tables. And on a seat opposite to him 
he beheld two auburn-haired youths playing at 
chess. He saw a silver board for the chess, and 
golden pieces thereon. The garments of the 
youths were of jet black satin, and chaplets of 

[ io8 ] 



The City of the Prince of Wales 

ruddy gold bound their hair, whereon were 
sparkUng jewels of great price, rubies and gems, 
alternating with imperial stones. . . . And be- 
side a pillar in the hall he saw a hoary-headed 
man, in a chair of ivory, with the figures of two 
eagles in ruddy gold thereon. Bracelets of gold 
were upon his arms, many rings were on his 
hands and a gold torque about his neck ; and 
his hair was bound with a golden diadem. He 
was of powerful aspect. A chessboard of gold 
was before him, and a rod of gold, and a steel 
file in his hand. And he was carving out chess- 
men. And he saw a maiden sitting before him 
in a chair of ruddy gold. Not more easy than 
to gaze upon the sun when brightest, was it to 
look upon her by reason of her beauty. A vest 
of white silk was upon the maiden, with clasps 
of ruddy gold at the breast, and a surcoat of 
gold tissue upon her, and a frontlet of ruddy 
gold upon her head, and rubies and gems were 
in the frontlet, alternating with pearls and im- 
perial stones. And a girdle of ruddy gold was 
around her. She was the fairest sight that man 
ever beheld." What more beautiful in any 
castle to be, in any modern royal pageant of 
to-day or to-morrow, could there be than this 

[ 109 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Helen of Wales of whom the Emperor dreamed 
and whom he sought and found? Unlike the 
other Grecian Helen, she left, not records of 
war and strife behind to attest her beauty, but 
serviceable roads over many of which we may 
still travel to-day. 

With the exception of Alnwick, Carnarvon 
Castle is the finest in Great Britain. It is a won- 
derful creation of man, a thing of strength and 
beauty, of might and grace ; its decorated castel- 
lated architecture, facing two ways towards the 
sea, giving it a visionary appearance of charm 
wholly lacking in the bulky massiveness of Con- 
way and Harlech, — magic casements, these, as 
I said before, — 

" opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 

Its thirteen towers, pentagonal, hexagonal, octa- 
gonal, perfect in their slender grace from walls 
ten feet thick. About one hundred and fifty 
years ago. Pennant wrote : "This town is justly 
the boast of North Wales, for the beauty of 
situation, goodness of the buildings, regularity 
of the plan, and, above all, the grandeur of the 
castle, the most magnificent badge of our sub- 
jection." 

[ no] 



The City of the Prince of Wales 

It was in the Eagle Tower in which Edward 
II, the first Prince of Wales, — though why they 
should forget their own valiant GrufFyd ap 
Llewelyn is more than the writer can see, — is 
supposed to have been born. The ivy clings 
now everywhere upon its castellated summits. 
Probably the famous tower was so called be- 
cause of the bird carved upon its walls. "Within 
a little dark room of this tower," says Pennant, 
" not twelve feet long, nor eight in breadth, was 
born Edward II ; so little, in those days, did a 
royal consort consult either pomp or conven- 
iency." Alas, the Prince was not born in that 
little tower as records well show I The Welsh 
refused to acknowledge the English king unless 
he would dwell in Wales. This was impossible; 
so their demands were modified to the require- 
ment that the prince placed over them must be 
of their own nation and language and of an un- 
blamable life. Queen Eleanor was about to be 
confined, and, although it was midwinter and 
harsh weather, the king sent for her and she was 
brought to Carnarvon where the first English 
Prince of Wales was born. As soon as Edward 
heard that the child was born he called the 
Welsh nobility together at Rhuddlan, ostensibly 

[III] 



Gallant Little Wales 



to consult about the public good and safety of 
all Wales. Once there, he told them that in 
case he had to leave the country he would ap- 
point in his place a prince who would fulfil the 
conditions they had given, provided they would 
obey him, naming one who had been *'born in 
Wales, could speak no English, and whose life 
and conversation nobody could stain," and then 
named his own son just born in Carnarvon. In 
his seventeenth year, 1301, this Prince of Wales 
was formally invested, even as in 1911 another 
Prince of Wales was endued, " with a chaplet 
of gold round his head, a golden ring on his 
finger, and a silver sceptre in his hand." The 
title is never inherited, but is conferred by spe- 
cial creation and investiture. 

Unfortunate for romantic tradi-tion is it that 
Edward II built the Eagle Tower and was not 
born in it. But these are the facts of the case, 
and the people of Carnarvon know them per- 
fectly well. Undoubtedly, however, this prince 
was born in the town. One feels indignant some- 
times, perhaps often, in Wales at the value set 
upon celebrity, the celebrity which " pays " ; at 
Denbigh the proud claiming of Stanley, the ex- 
plorer, where the poor lad was knocked about 

[ 112] 



The City of the Prince of Wales 

and abused worse than some cur of the streets ; 
the exploitation of Dr. Johnson, who happened 
to be with Mrs. Piozzi in the vicinity of Den- 
bigh for a few days; and then this EngHsh 
Prince of Wales whom the Welsh insist upon 
having born in the tower which he himself built! 
Ah, well, — 

" Why should not gallant TafFy 
Have his relics and his bones, 
Llewelyns and Cadwallos, 
And GrifFyevanjones ? " 

And we must just be willing to let this cher- 
ished Eagle Tower be an indispensable Welsh 
bone — or relic of contention. 

The gateway of Carnarvon Castle is very im- 
pressive, of great size and strength, as are most 
of these North Wales castles, but, as is not the 
case with most of them, with romantic grace 
added. Vines clamber up it and over it, cracks 
etch the portions of the walls which are bare. 
Above the gateway, in its niche high out of 
reach of destructive enemies, is the figure of 
Edward II; and to the right and to the left 
graceful turrets rise above the walls. Low on 
the face of the gateway tower are slits for de- 
fence, above them at a safe altitude are windows i 

[ "3 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



with part of the tracery still intact. This en- 
trance was besieged by Glendower in the fif- 
teenth century and by a Parhamentary army 
in the seventeenth. Bitter battles were fought 
about the old gate and in the town beyond. One 
day at Carnarvon, when the peasant folk were 
holding a fair, one Madoc, who claimed to be 
the son of Llewelyn, burst into the market 
square, stormed the castle, and left the town a 
smouldering ruin. 

But distant, far, far distant are those ancient 
days of primitive strife. And as I turned off my 
Snowdon road to enter by this castle gateway I 
had still in mind the peaceful, prosperous town 
through which I had come and the ships on the 
sea beyond and the shining island shore of 
Mona, mother of Wales. We paid our entrance 
fee and, as I was doing that, my eye caught 
sight of an old table there under the arch, lit- 
tered with books for sale. I looked at the shim- 
mering green grass beyond in the castle court- 
yard down upon which the sun was flooding. 
We were in no haste. I wanted to dally, and 
dally I did by the bookstall, my hand falling 
upon a first edition of Goldsmith's " Bee", to be 
sold at sixpence ! We paid for it, and I could 
["4] 



The City of the Prince of Wales 

hear my friend saying, "Do you suppose it 
really is a first edition "? " 

My fingers between the leaves of this book, 
I turned to and opened " A City Night-Peace," 
reading, "There may come a time when this 
temporary solitude may be made continual, and 
the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, 
and leave a desert in its room." Then we went 
through into the sunshine in the courtyard be- 
yond, the book clasped tightly in my hand, and 
the hours passed as in a dream. There was the 
touch of time made visible, there was life car- 
ried forward even in the busy chirping of the 
birds upon the vine-covered walls, there was 
sunshine as it had been in those olden but not 
more golden days than this, there was the sound 
of voices, voices beloved so long, long ago, and 
speaking again ; there was joy, and sorrow, living 
again for me and in me; there once more was all 
that eager, ardent, daily commonplace of human 
lives, that daily friendliness of little things which 
makes life so worth the living. I felt it in all about 
us, woven into everything, the cheerful noise of 
birds, the voices from beyond the castle walls, 
the sunshine, the colour ; and more and more the 
spirit of the place took possession of me. 

C i"s] 



Gallant L,ittle Wales 



Again as in a dream within a dream we passed 
through the castle gateway out into the town 
with its simple old houses, its little shops with 
their signboards and gay windows, its inns and 
lodgings, past the Welsh children playing in 
the streets and their elders going gravely to and 
fro about their business, and the sleek horses and 
whirling motors, up the hill past Llanbeblig 
Church, the churchyard Watts-Dunton has used 
as part of the setting of his story *'Aylwin," and 
on to the country road which, with thirteen 
miles' walking, would bring us home — to our 
Welsh home at the foot of Snowdon, Eryri, the 
home of eagles. Behind us, as we turned, the 
ships had become but white moths on a vast 
sea, Anglesey was growing dimmer, the cows 
pastured on the plain about the old town were 
but specks, the coast-line was merging into the 
water. But still the castle dominated every- 
thing, and I thought of Dr. Samuel Johnson's 
delight in that vast pile and his naive record in 
the Cambrian journal : " I did not think there 
had been such buildings ; it surpassed my ideas." 



VII 

T^he Ejisteddfod 

It was the first morning of my first Welsh 
National Eisteddfod, and I sat by the window- 
working, and glancing away from my work to 
a hillside up which led narrow steps to the sum- 
mits above, among which were hidden away some 
half a dozen tiny villages. Colwyn Bay, where 
the Eisteddfod was to be held, was — as the crow 
does not fly — about forty miles distant. It was a 
glorious morning of sunshine in which gleamed 
the river, glossy beeches and pines, and little 
whitewashed Welsh cottages. As I looked, there 
began to emerge from the steps a stream of peo- 
ple ; down and down they flowed, bright in their 
pretty dresses or shining in their black Sunday- 
best broadcloth. All those mountain hamlets up 
above, reached by roads passable only for moun- 
tain ponies, were sending their men, women, and 
children to the Welsh festival of song and poetry. 
Talking and excited about who would be 
chaired as bard, who would be crowned, what 
female choir would win in the choral contests, what 
C "7 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



male choir, and discussing a thousand little com- 
petitions, even to a set of insertions for sheets, 
shams, and towels, we were borne on the train 
from Bettws-y-Coed swiftly through the Vale of 
Conway, beside the river, past Caerhun, the once 
ancient city of Canovium, past Conway Castle, 
with its harp-shaped walls still encircling the town, 
and so to Colwyn Bay. 

Then all these enthusiastic people who had 
climbed down a hill to take the train, climbed 
up another to see the first Gorsedd ceremony. 
As we passed, from one of the cottages was heard 
the voice of a woman screaming in great excite- 
ment, "Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones, come to the 
front door quickly. There 's some people going 
by; they're dressed in blue and white. Dear 
me, Mrs. Jones, they 're men ! " The procession, 
fully aware that Mrs. Jones, and all the little 
Joneses and all the big and middling Joneses, 
too, had come, went on gravely up, up, up the 
hill to " Y Fanerig " (the Flagstaff), where stood 
the " Maen Llog of the Gorsedd " and its en- 
circling stones. The paths were steep, and even 
bards and druids are subject to embonpoint. Old 
Eos Dar, who can sing penillion with never a 
pause for breath, lost his "wind," and the 
[ii8] 



The Kisteddfod 



" Bearer of the Great Sword of the Gorsedd " 
was no more to be found. A boy scout, perhaps 
thinking of Scott's minstrel, who said, — 

" The way was long, the wind was cold, 
The minstrel was infirm and old," 

was despatched downhill after him, and found 
him and the sword, arm in arm, lagging comfort- 
ably behind. Druidical deportment is astonish- 
ingly human at times. But the hilltop achieved 
and wind recovered, the bards soberly made 
their way into the druidical circle of stones that 
surround the great Gorsedd stone. Nowhere, as 
the Archdruid remarked, had the Bardic Brother- 
hood been brought nearer heaven. • 

From the summit, north, east, south, west, 
the soft valleys, the towering mountains, the 
secluded villages, the shining rivers, and the 
great sea were visible. And there on this hill- 
top the bards, druids, and ovates dressed in blue 
and white and green robes, celebrated rites only 
less old than the Eye of Light itself. After the 
sounding of the trumpet (" Corn Gwlad "), the 
Gorsedd prayer was recited in Welsh, — 

" Grant, O God, Thy Protection; 
And in Protection, Strength; 

[ "9] 



Gallant Little Wales 



And in Strength, Understanding ; 
And in Understanding, Knowledge ; 
And in Knowledge, the Knowledge of Justice ; 
And in the Knowledge of Justice, the Love of it ; 
And in that Love, the Love of all Existence ; 
And in the Love of all Existence, the Love of God. 
God and all Goodness." 

Then the Archdruid, Dyfed, standing upon the 
Gorsedd stone and facing the east, unsheathed 
the great sword, crying out thrice, " Aoes Hedd- 
wch *? " (Is it peace V) and the bards and ovates 
replied " Heddwch ! " (Peace.) 

There are some scholars who question the 
" identity of the Bardic Gorsedd with the druidic 
system." The Welsh Gorsedd, this side of the 
controversial point, is forty centuries old, and 
in all conscience that is old enough. Diodorus, 
the Cicilian, wrote, "There are, among the 
Gauls, makers of verses, whom they name bards. 
There are also certain philosophers and theo- 
logists, exceedingly esteemed, whom they call 
Druids." Strabo, the geographer, says, " Amongst 
the whole of the Gauls three classes are espe- 
cially held in distinguished honour — the bards, 
•the prophets, and the druids. The bards are 
singers and poets, the prophets are sacrificers 

[ I20 ] 



The Bjisteddfod 



and philosophers, but the druids, besides physi- 
ology, practised ethical philosophy." As far 
back as we can look in the life of the Cymru, 
poetry, song, and theology have been inex- 
tricably woven together. The Gorsedd was then, 
formally, for the Welsh people what it still is 
informally : a popular university, a law court, a 
parliament. The modern Gorsedd, with its twelve 
stones, is supposed to represent the signs of the 
zodiac through which the sun passes, with a 
central stone, called the "Maen Llog," in the 
position of the sacrificial fire in the druidical 
temple. A close reverence for nature, a certain 
pantheism in the cult of the druids, shows itself 
in various ways, — in the belief that the oak 
tree was the home of the god of lightning, that 
mistletoe, which usually grows upon the oak, 
was a mark of divine favour. The most pro- 
minent symbol of the Gorsedd is the "Broad 
Arrow " or " mystic mark," supposed to repre- 
sent the rays of light which the druids wor- 
shipped. Even the colours of the robes of the 
druids, ovates, and bards are full of character- 
istic worship of nature ; the druids in white sym- 
bolical of the purity of truth and light, the 
ovates in green like the life and growth of na- 

[ 121 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



ture, the bards in blue, the hue of the sky and 
in token of the loftiness of their calling. 

Up there on the hilltop, with its vast pano- 
rama of hill and valley, sea and sky, time became 
as nothing. The Gorsedd became again the dem- 
ocratic Witenagemot of the Welsh, and there 
still were represented the mountain shepherd, 
the pale collier, the lusty townsman, the gentle 
knight, the expounder of law, the teacher and 
the priest. But if upon the hill time was as no- 
thing, down below in the gigantic Eisteddfod 
pavilion some ten thousand people were wait- 
ing. " Gallant little Wales," which has certainly 
awakened from its long sleep, was past the 
period of rubbing its eyes. It was shouting and 
calling for the Eisteddfod ceremonies to begin, 
perhaps as the folk in Caerwys had called im- 
patiently in the days of the twelfth century, or 
again in that old town in the days of Elizabeth, 
the last that memorable Eisteddfod when a com- 
mission was appointed by Elizabeth herself to 
check the bad habits of a crowd of lazy illit- 
erate bards who went about the country begging. 

That great Eisteddfodic pavilion, where the 
people were waiting good-naturedly but impa- 
tiently, is primarily a place of music. Even as 
[ 122 ] 



The Eisteddfod 



in the world, so in Wales music comes first in 
the hearts of mankind and poetry second. And 
it may be, since music is more social and dem- 
ocratic, that the popular preference is as it should 
be. The human element in all that happens at 
a Welsh Eisteddfod is robust and teeming with 
enthusiasm. It is true that prize-taking socks, 
shawls, pillow shams, and such homely articles 
no longer hang in festoons above the platform as 
they did some twenty or thirty years ago. Now 
the walls are gaily decorated with banners bear- 
ing thousands of spiteful-looking dragons, and 
pennants inscribed with the names of scores of 
famous Welshmen, and with such mottoes as 
" Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd "(the truth against 
the world), "Gwlad y Mabinogion"(the land of 
the Mabinogion), " Calon wrth Galon" (heart 
with heart), and others. 

After the procession of dignitaries was seated 
upon the platform, a worried-looking bard be- 
gan to call out prizes for every conceivably use- 
ful thing under the sun, among them a clock 
tower which he seemed to be in need of himself 
as a rostrum for his throat-splitting yells. During 
these announcements the choirs were filing in, 
a pretty child with a 'cello much larger than 
[ 123 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



herself was taking off her hat and coat, a stiff, 
self-conscious young man was bustling about 
with an air of importance, and in the front, 
just below the platform, sat newspaper report- 
ers, from all over the United Kingdom, busy 
at their work. Among them were the gray, the 
young, the weary, the dusty, the smart, the 
shabby, and one who wore a wig, but made up 
in roses in his buttonhole for what he lacked in 
hair. There were occasional cheers as some local 
prima donna entered the choir seats, and many 
jokes from the anxious-looking master of cere- 
monies. 

At last the first choir was assembled, and a 
little lady, somebody's good mother, mounted 
upon a chair. The choir began to sing, — 

" Come, sisters, come, 
Where light and shadows mingle. 
And elves and fairies dance and sing, 
Upon the meadow land." 

The little lady never worked harder, her baton, 
her hands, her head, her lips, her eyes were all 
busy. Was it the Celtic spirit that made those 
elves and fairies seem to dance upon the meadows 
or did they really dance ? The next choir was 
[ 124 ] 




2 S 



The Risteddfod 



composed of younger women, among them 
many a beauty-loving face, alas ! too pale and 
telling of the hard life of the hills or of the 
harder life of some mining-town. Of the third 
choir the leader was a merry little man, scarcely 
as high as the leader's stand, with a wild look in 
his twinkling eyes as he waved a baton and the 
choir began, — 

" Far beneath the stars we lie. 
Far from gaze of mortal eye, 
Far beneath the ocean swell. 
Here we merry mermaids dwell." 

He believed not only in his choir, but also in those 
mermaidens, and so did the little lad, not much 
bigger than Hofmann when he first began to tour, 
who played the accompaniment. When that 
choir went out, a fourth came in, still inviting 
the sisters to come. At last the sisters not only 
came, but also decided to stay, and another choir 
lured the sailor successfully to his doom, and all 
was over, for even in choir tragedies there must 
be an end to the song. The gallant little mother 
had won the first prize. It takes the mothers to 
win prizes, and the audience thought so, too. 
The crowd yelled and stamped with delight. 

[ 1^5 3 



Gallant Little Whales 



When one asks one's self whether Surrey, for 
example, or such a state as Massachusetts in 
America, could be brought to send its people from 
every farm, every valley, every hilltop, to a festival 
thousands strong, day after day for a whole week, 
one realizes how tremendous a thing this Welsh 
national enthusiasm is. Educationally nothing 
could be a greater movement for Wales. To the 
Welsh the beauty of worship, of music, of poetry 
are inseparable. Only so can this passion for 
beauty, which brings multitudes together to take 
part in all that is noblest and best in Welsh life, 
be explained. Only so can you understand why 
some young collier, pale [^and work-worn, sings 
with his whole soul and shakes with the song 
within him even as a bird shakes with the notes 
that are too great for its body. These Welsh sing 
as if music were all the world to them, and in it 
they forget the world. Behind the passion of their 
song lies a devout religious conviction, and their 
song sweeps up in praise and petition to an Al- 
mighty God, who listens to Shelley's "Ode to the 
West Wind " as well as to some great hymn. To 
hear ten thousand Welsh people singing "Land 
of my Fathers," each taking naturally one of the 
four parts and all singing in perfect harmony, is 
[ 1^6] 



The Risteddfod 



to have one of the great experiences of life. To 
hear Shelley's " Ode " set to Elgar's music and 
sung by several choirs, to hear that wild, far- 
travelling wind sweep along in a tumult of har- 
monies, to know that every heart there was as a 
lyre even to the least breath of that wind, to hear 
that last cry, — 

" Oh, wind. 
If winter comes, can spring be far behind ? " — 

to listen again to those choirs late in the evening 
on the station platform with the sea dim and vast 
and muting the song to its own greater music, is 
to have felt in the Welsh spirit what no tongue 
can describe, — it is to understand the meaning 
of the word " hwyl," that untranslatable word of 
a passionate emotionalism. 

All that went on behind the scenes the audi- 
ence could not know. They saw only those con- 
sidered by the adjudicators fit to survive. They 
did not see the six blind people, for even the blind 
have their place in this great festival, who entered 
the little school-room off Abergele Road to take 
the preliminary tests, the girl who played " The 
Harmonious Blacksmith," and, shaking from ex- 
citenxent and holding on to her guide, was led 
[ 127 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



away unsuccessful. They did not see the lad who 
played " Men of Harlech " crudely, his anxious 
ageing, work-worn mother sitting beside him, 
holding his stick and nodding her head in ap- 
proval. All they heard were a selected two who 
were considered by the judges fit to play, a man 
both blind and deaf who performed a scherzo of 
Brahms and a Carnarvon sea-captain, now blind, 
who played on the violin. The quiet of the one- 
time sea-captain's face laid against the violin, the 
peace and pleasure in the lines about the sightless 
eyes, would have repaid the whole audience — 
even if the violinist had not been an exception- 
ally good player — for listening. 

One of the inspiring and amusing events of 
the week was the discovery of a marvellous con- 
tralto. A young girl, shabbily dressed and ill at 
ease, came out to sing. Everything was being 
pressed forward towards the crowning of the bard, 
one of the great events of the Eisteddfod. Peo- 
ple were impatient, and somewhat noisy. But as 
the girl began to sing they quieted down, then 
they listened with wonder, and in a minute you 
could have heard a pin drop in that throng of 
ten thousand. Before she had finished singing, 
" Jesu, Lover of my Soul," the audience knew 

[ 128] 



The Kisteddfod 



that it had listened to one of the great singers of 
the world. When she had finished her song and 
unclasped her hands, she became again nothing 
more than an awkward, silly, giggling child whom 
Llew Tegid had to hold by the arm. 

The audience shouted, " What 's her name ? " 

"Maggie Jones," he replied; "that begins 
well." 

" Where does she come from *? " demanded 
the crowd. 

" Police station," answered Llew Tegid lugu- 
briously. 

The audience roared with laughter and de- 
manded the name of the town. Maggie Jones 
is the daughter of Police Superintendent Jones 
of Pwllheli. Perhaps in the years to come the 
world will hear her name again. 

There are children at these Eisteddfodau 
whose little feet can scarce reach the pedals of a 
harp. Even the robins singing up in the high 
pavilion roof who had joined in the music from 
time to time, trilling joyously to Handel's " Oh, 
had I Jubal's Lyre," twittered with surprise that 
anything so small could play anything so large. 
But no one of the thousands there, even the child- 
ren, grew t'red for an instant, unless it was these 

[ 129 3, 



Gallant Little Wales 



same robins, who were weary at times because 
of the cheerless character of some of the sacred 
music sung in competition and themselves start- 
ed up singing blithely and gladly as God meant 
that birds and men should sing. The robins 
twittered madly when some sturdy little Welsh- 
man stepped into the penillion singing, accom- 
panied by the harp, no more to be daunted than 
a child stepping into rope skipping. When the 
grown-ups had finished, two little children came 
forward and sang their songs. North Wales style. 
The afternoon was growing later and later ; 
it was high time for the name of the bard of 
the crown poem to be announced. At last, with 
due pomp, the name of the young bard was 
announced. Every one looked to see where he 
might be sitting. He was found sitting modestly 
in the rear of the big pavilion, and there were 
shouts of " Dyma fo 1 " (here he is). Two bards 
came down and escorted him to the platform, 
where all the druids, ovates, and bards wereawait- 
ing him. The band, the trumpeter, the harp, and 
the sword now all performed their service, the 
sun slanting down through the western win- 
dows on to this bardic pageant. The sparrows 
flew in and out of the sunlight, unafraid of the 
[ 130 ] 



The Eisteddfod 



dragons that waved about them and the bands 
that played beneath them, and the great sword 
held sheathed over the young bard's head. The 
sword was bared three times and sheathed again 
as all shouted " Heddwch ! " The bard was 
crowned and the whole audience rose to the 
Welsh national song. 

What is the meaning of this unique festival 
of poetry and song ? Mr. Lloyd George, who 
had escaped from the din of battle outside, and 
the jeers of the Goths and Vandals who could n't 
or wouldn't understand the Fourth Form, said, 
amidst laughter, that there was no budget to raise 
taxes for the upkeep of the Eisteddfod. Then 
he continued, " The bards are not compelled by 
law to fill up forms. ^There is no conscription 
to raise an army from the ranks of the people to 
defend the Eisteddfod's empire in the heart of 
the nation. And yet, after the lapse of genera- 
tions, the Eisteddfod is more alive than ever. 
Well, of what good is she % I will tell you one 
thing — she demonstrates what the democracy of 
Wales can do at its best. The democracy has 
kept her alive; the democracy has filled her 
chairs ; the sons of the democracy compete for 
her honours. I shall never forget my visit to the 

[ 131 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Llangollen Eisteddfod two years ago. When 
crossing the hills between Flintshire and the val- 
ley of the Dee, I saw their slopes darkened with 
the streams of shepherds and cottagers and their 
famihes going towards the town. What did they 
go to see *? To see a man of their nation hon- 
oured for a piece of poetry . . . . And the people 
were as quick to appreciate the points as any 
expert of the Gorsedd, and wonderfully respon- 
sive to every lofty thought." Yes, unlike any 
other gathering in the world, the Eisteddfod is 
all that. Long ago in the latter half of the eight- 
eenth century lolo Morganwg stated the objects 
of Welsh bardism, — " to reform the morals and 
customs; to secure peace; to praise (or encour- 
age) all that is good or excellent." This national 
festival is the popular university of the people, 
it is the centre of Welsh nationalism, the feast 
of Welsh brotherhood. Only listened to in this 
spirit can one understand what it means when 
an Eisteddfodic throng, after the crowning of 
the bard, rises to sing "Hen Wlad fy Nha- 
dau," — 

" Old land that our fathers before us held dear." 



VIII 

Cambrian Cottages 

In the "Dream of Rhonabwy," from the "Ma- 
binogion," one of the great books of the imag- 
inative literature of the world, it is not a very 
pleasant picture which we get of a Welsh home. 
Yet the Welsh cottage home of to-day is a 
treasure of beauty and orderliness. Doubtless 
this picture from the "Dream of Rhonabwy," 
in its realistic detail, making allowances for cer- 
tain Norman influences at work upon the various 
stories of the "Mabinogion," is a true one. The 
strength and rustiness of the colouring of the 
house of Heilyn Goch, the blackness of the old 
hall, the upright gable out of the door of which 
poured the household smoke, the floor inside 
full of puddles and slippery with the mire of 
cattle, the boughs of holly spread on the floor, 
and at one side of the hall an old hag making 
a fire, the yellow calf-skin it was a privilege 
for any one to get upon, the barley bread and 
cheese and milk which, after the people of the 
house had entered, — a ruddy, curly-headed man 



Gallant Little Wales 



with faggots on his back, and a pale slender 
woman, — they were given to eat ; — all, I say, 
forms a picture rude, coarse, strong in its prim- 
itive detail of twelfth-century Cymric house- 
hold life. Something more, too, it suggests. As 
Matthew Arnold says, "The very first thing 
that strikes one, in reading the ' Mabinogion,' 
is how evidently the mediseval story-teller is pil- 
laging an antiquity of which he does not fully 
possess the secret; he is like a peasant building 
his hut on the side of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; 
he builds, but what he builds is full of materials 
of which he knows not the history, or knows by 
a glimmering tradition merely." 

There are other pictures, too, in the " Mabin- 
ogion" of early Welsh household life, pictures 
which one must question because of their lux- 
ury and general magnificence, features evidently 
due to the strong Norman influence one finds 
at work almost throughout these stories. No 
picture could be more rich and more beautiful 
than that in the " Dream of Maxen Wledig," 
where Helen is found by the Emperor's messen- 
ger sitting in the old castle hall at Carnarvon. 
These are the tales of the splendid, barbaric 
youth of a people, filled with the vividness, the 
[ '34] 



Cambrian Cottages 



crowding, the vitality of youth, and touched to 
an even more magnificent beauty by another 
hand which was deHberate and Norman — stories 
divinely disregardful of what might have been 
intelligible; in their mystery and wonder full of 
the life of the young. Barbaric touches, magic, 
fantastic elements, crude life, gorgeous colour- 
ing, — all this and thrice more than this does 
one find in the " Mabinogion." 

At first dreaming, — for dream one must 
over the cottages of Wales if one is ever truly 
to enter them, — these homes of a more recent 
time would seem to have suffered a loss in 
vividness, in interest, so immeasurable that there 
could be no gain to balance against it. Gone 
are the mystery and the semblance of splen- 
dour; the sense of adventure and the strong, 
wild life of these earlier centuries are forever 
vanished. Yes, gone they are, and gone they 
were before ever a redacteur took down one 
of the tales of the " Mabinogion " from report 
that was already becoming but tradition. Pur- 
posely did I select the " Dream of Rhonabwy," 
for not only in closeness to human reality, but 
also in architectural detail, do I believe it to be 
an exact picture of early Welsh home life. After 

[ 135] 



Gallant Little Wales 



the sordid picture of the hall, the description of 
the rainstorm comes but as a reinforcing touch 
of truthfulness : " And there arose a storm of 
wind and rain, so that it was hardly possible to 
go forth with safety. And being weary with 
their journey, they laid themselves down and 
sought sleep. And when they looked at the 
couch, it seemed to be made but of a little 
coarse straw . . . with the stems of boughs 
sticking therethrough, for the cattle had eaten 
all the straw that was placed at the head and at 
the foot. And upon it was stretched an old rus- 
set-coloured rug, threadbare and ragged ; and a 
coarse sheet, full of slits, was upon the rug, and 
an ill-stuffed pillow, and a worn-out cover upon 
the sheet. And after much suffering from . . . 
the discomfort of their couch, a heavy sleep fell 
on Rhonabwy's companion. But Rhonabwy, 
not being able either to sleep or to rest, thought 
he should suffer less if he went to lie upon the 
yellow calf-skin that was stretched out on the 
floor. And there he slept." Undoubtedly here 
even the slit sheet is a touch of Norman elegance. 
In the " Dream of Rhonabwy," not in the far 
more beautiful " Dream of Maxen Wledig," 
with its elaborate interior descriptions, do we 

[ 136 ] 



Cambrian Cottages 



find something like prototype for the Welsh 
cottage of to-day : the fire made against the gable 
end, even as it is now in the cottages, the sleep- 
ing accommodations at the opposite ends. This 
is the arrangement still of the vast majority of 
the cottages. Originally probably there were no 
windows other than, it may be, little slits — 
" wind-eyes " they were called with that relevant 
quaintness characteristic of early speech — such 
as we see to this day in old Welsh barns. In 
the "Mabinogion" story of Geraint, with its 
white stag, its divergent sense of the forest and 
of a bustling town life and the beautiful Gwen- 
hwyvar, there is reference to glass windows: 
"And one morning in the summer time they 
were upon their couch, and Geraint lay upon the 
edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the 
apartment, which had windows of glass. And 
the sun shone upon the couch. And the clothes 
had slipped from off his arms and his breast, 
and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the 
marvellous beauty of his appearance, and she 
said, 'Alas, and I am the cause that these arms 
and this breast have lost their glory and the war- 
like fame which they once so richly enjoyed.' " 
Are any lines in Tennyson's " Enid " taken from 

[ 137 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



this "Mabinogion" tale, that story upon which 
Tennyson's widest popularity was founded, 
more vivid than this beautiful romantic touch ? 
Undoubtedly these glass windows which re- 
vealed the manly beauty of Geraint in over- 
throw were glass lattices. They could not have 
been very common, and considerably later they 
were followed by wooden lattices in general use 
in the Welsh cottage, and still occasionally to 
be found to-day. I have found them several 
times in the dairy-rooms of old cottages in North 
Wales. Norman influence was at work in this 
story of the late twelfth or early thirteenth cent- 
ury from the " Mabinogion." Sometime in the 
fourteenth or fifteenth century it was that the 
lattice window of the cottage came in, nor did 
it go out of use until the end of the seventeenth 
century. The window was a double frame ^ — just 
as it is most frequently now — filled with woven 
diamond lattice. Within were wooden shutters 
opening inwards. A distant view or sketch of 
the leaded panes of to-day or of the diamond 
lattice of a long ago yesterday reveals no differ- 
ence between the two, so closely has the type 
of window been kept, as, for example, the little, 
old-style windows of Beddgelert and Carnarvon. 

[ 138] 



Cambrian Cottages 



And the beauty out upon which these old 
windows look is ever the same — Eryri, Eagle's 
Eyrie, is this land of North Wales. Peak, pre- 
cipice, lake, rushing stream, valley, forest lie 
always before one, sometimes shrouded for a 
while by the mist, again pricked out in indes- 
cribable altitude of mountain or whiteness of 
falling water before eyes that cannot fail to won- 
der at their beauty. In the fourteenth book of 
the "Prelude," Wordsworth writes of the ascent 
which he and his Welsh friend made of Snow- 
don from Beddgelert at dawn, and we may, if 
we have not been in that mountain-cupped 
heart of Wales to hear it for ourselves, hear with 
Wordsworth the mounting 

" roar of waters, torrents, streams, 
Innumerable, roaring with one voice ! " 

And with the poet, too, behold an 

" Emblem of a mind 
That feeds upon infinity." 

The majestic beauty of these little Alps of 
Wales seems but to emphasize the cheerfulness 
and cosiness of the life man has made for him- 
self. Indeed, nowhere are valleys greener, more 
sheltering, more homelike, more cosey. And 
[ 139 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



the cottages, with their ascending spirals of peat 
smoke, the sweet fragrance of their homely life, 
speak a language of welcome no one can mis- 
take. Gone are the old barbaric days, with their 
rough, strong life, their adventure ; gone are the 
days of chivalry, with their bright pageant, their 
luxury, their courtly ways. Here we may turn 
a stone of those mediseval days, there touch a 
fretted memorial of still earlier times, even before 
Arthur had come to wake the world to a new 
romance and a new and selfless endeavour. Les- 
sened, cheaper may this humble cottage heritage 
of the present seem than those times which have 
gone their "journey of all days " into the past. But 
not so does this sweet homeliness seem to me. 
Life is gentler, life is better, perhaps even kind- 
lier within them by the bright hearth where, for 
the asking, any one may sit welcomed and at 
ease. Their purple roofs are but modest regal 
seal upon the happiness within. One feels 
singularly close to that great mother of us 
all in these tiny Welsh cottages, near to what 
is essential, what is real. Mortals who have 
not been dissevered from their proper feeling 
for houses will realize that these little homes 
have sprung, as it were, from the soil, that the 
[ 140 ] 



w:^'-r 




o 



Cambrian Cottages 



cord binding them to the earth has never 
been cut. 

The " Cyttiau Gwyddelod " or circular huts 
were the earliest forms of dwellings of which 
there are still remains. One finds them in vari- 
ous places on the meadows lying between and 
in front of Pen-y-Pass and Pen-y-Gwyrd where 
Charles Kingsley loved to stop. There are many 
other places, too, one not far out of Barmouth 
where Tennyson stayed and where some of the 
stanzas from "In Memoriam" were written; 
and some near Bettws-y-Coed, one of whose 
valleys, the Lledr, Ruskin called the most beau- 
tiful in the world. The little circular rings of 
foundation stones are curiously disappointing, 
scarcely worth the seeing, except that, in touch- 
ing them, it may be one presses a hand's 
breadth nearer to a vanished past. These circu- 
lar huts lasted through a Roman-British period, 
and looked, probably, much like a wigwam, 
with a circular foundation wall of stone, wood, 
or wattle, from four to six feet high, capped with 
woven boughs of thatch, and within, a floor 
diameter from twelve to twenty-four feet. Grad- 
ually the circular hut gave place to the rectangu- 
lar, at first with slight improvement in comfort, 

Chi] 



Gallant Lutle Wales 



as I think the picture of "Rhonabwy" suggests. 
There was still no chimney or ingle and the 
smoke poured out of the open doorway. Yet in 
the arrangement described in "Rhonabwy" we 
have embryonically the arrangement of to-day. 
The subdivision of the interior space was still 
to come. 

The earliest examples extant of the rectangu- 
lar type are of the fourteenth and fifteenth cent- 
uries. Up till three years ago, when it was de- 
stroyed to make room for an extension of the 
Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, such a little cot- 
tage there still was in Beddgelert, Ty Ucha. Such 
a cot there still is in Bettws-y-Coed, Dol y 
Waenydd ; also Tyddyn Cynal, near Aber Con- 
way, as well as Old Plas, Llanfair Fechan, to give 
but a few examples which any lover of Welsh 
life may consult for himself. These little cottages 
are to be distinguished by their roof principals, 
which start from the floor, heavy curved pieces 
of oak meeting at the ridge in the roof No doubt 
the earliest churches were built in this fashion 
and the cottages were copied from them. The 
churches of old foundation which survive, how- 
ever, are, as I have said in the chapter on the little 
churches of Wales, in the style the Latin monks 

[ 142 ] 



Cambrian Cottages 



dictated and Llewelyn the Great introduced into 
Wales, — twelfth-century churches such as those 
at Llanrhychwyn, Gyffin, and Caerhun. Beyond 
question, Welsh cottages represent a native in- 
fluence which antedates that of the oldest churches 
now extant in Wales. 

In the Welsh women who sit by the ingle fire 
of this cottage life one feels an age-old continuity 
of home, of the heart of things, of association, of 
service, of beauty ; the pale slender woman of the 
"Dream of Rhonabwy" who entered the hall 
with the ruddy man ; the maiden with " yellow 
curling hair " whom, in the " Lady of the Foun- 
tain," Owain sees through an aperture in the 
gate, a row of houses on either side of the maiden ; 
and others who kindle fires and perform the 
household tasks, who accoutre the knights, who 
embroider with gold upon yellow satin. Much 
of the colour of that mediaeval world is a thing 
of the past, but not its women : they are essen- 
tially the same, though of a democratic to-day, 
simple as Enid in her worn habiliments when 
Arthur asked her what expedition this was and 
she replied, " I know not, lord, save that it be- 
hoves me to journey by the same road that he 
journeys." The woman of to-day knows now 

[143] 



Gallant Little Wales 



what that journey of her mate is, and still she goes 
with him, not driven before him, but by his side. 
It was on the road that, as I studied these 
little cottages from week to week, I encoun- 
tered the Welshwoman of both an olden romance 
and a present world of fact. Very humble little 
pilgrimages were these of mine, not made with- 
out their diverse experiences of joy and fatigue. 
Sometimes it was a little lane I travelled on 
foot, off the highroad and through the heart of 
a farmland, the hedges eight feet high with 
honeysuckle and heaven-deep with fragrance; 
again I dropped down a hill, heather and fox- 
glove making a royal display in bare places, 
and in the distance the bells of Llanycil ring- 
ing; or I climbed a hill on the way to Llangy- 
nog, a ridge which seemed the top and the edge 
of the world, treeless upland pastures like deep 
agate rich with ruby, lavender, brown and 
freaked with emerald green, purple and pink, 
and all opalescent with sunshine, dotted with 
black sheep and white sheep and little lambs, 
some straddling with surprise as they rose stretch- 
ing and curling their tails with the delicious 
energy of awakening. Or, like Moses, I came 
down from Nebo, only it was a Welsh Nebo 
[ H4 ] 



Cambrian Cottages 



and my hands were full of peppermints bought 
for twopence, and children, rosy-cheeked young- 
sters in a frenzy of joy, were running about me. 
Into strange places may even a cottage gleam 
lead. Once it took me to that most primitive 
of all shelters, a cromlech, where gorse made 
sunshine on the hill and heather made a glory, 
and in a near-by oat-field pansies bloomed, and, 
above, a crown of pines sung in the ever-blowing 
winds. Or the gleam led me beside some tiny 
stream, almost invisible, that found its way like 
a thread downhill. 

" Down from the mountain 
And over the level, 
And streaming and shining on 
Silent river. 
Silvery willow, 
Pasture and plowland, 
Innocent maidens, 
Garrulous children. 
Homestead and harvest, 
Reaper and gleaner. 
And rough-ruddy faces 
Of lowly labour 
I followed the gleam." 

A gleam that led me on and on was this 
[ H5 ] 



Gallant Liitle Wales 



bright-shining, fragrant, humble cottage life of 
Wales, with its much-needed assurance, amidst 
the sorrows of our present times, that some magic 
of a life still full of faith is lived among these 
solitary hillsides, among busy towns and in shel- 
tered Welsh valleys. Into human difficulties, 
too, did my gleam lead me, as gleams have a 
way of doing. My first adventure was to find a 
cottage called " Buarthau " (pronounced Bee-ar- 
thai). I knew that it was on the hillside beyond 
Hendra Farm outside of Dolwyddelan, at the 
head of that valley, the Lledr, which Ruskin 
has called the most beautiful in the world. A 
child who spoke very little English summoned 
her mother, a pale, slender woman with a baby 
in her arms, to point out the cottage to me. 
The little girl led me and we climbed the steep 
hillside. Beside it were wild roses, cool in pink 
and green; beyond us was a magnificent view 
of Siabod, Snowdon, Aran, and Moel Hebog, 
becoming with every upward-mounting step 
more grand. The old roof of the sixteenth or 
seventeenth century which I had come to see 
was partly destroyed, the large curved princi- 
pals which came almost to the ground had been 
well rubbed and gnawed by the teeth of kine. 

[ 146 ] 



Cambrian Cottages 



Under a tree near a little cottage we ate our 
luncheon, a tree which accommodatingly turned 
itself into a harp. Then we came down, across 
the Lledr River, and turned and entered the 
village where the heart of the place is St. Gwyd- 
delan's Church, built about 1500 a.d., with a 
rood screen removed from some earlier church, 
a knocker to claim sanctuary still upon the 
door, and warm hay piled high and spread in 
the sun over the old graves. 

There was another day when I was in search 
of an old house still habitable, but of the same 
date of building as Buarthau. From Bettws-y- 
Coed I followed slowly up a long hill, from 
which I looked down into an ever-deepening 
valley, where lay the road leading up past the 
Conway and the Lledr to Dolwyddelan. After 
I passed Pentrevoelas, I picked up a little fel- 
low carrying a school-bag. We passed a big 
empty graveyard place where five new graves 
were crowded against the wall, — the living 
were planning well for the jostling of the dead 
who were to come, — then I put the little fel- 
low down by the chapel where his mother lived. 
The road to Giler grew more and more difficult. 
At last I came to a beautiful old house with a 

[ 147] 



Gallant Little Wales 



fortified gate and high surrounding walls. Out- 
side the walls, mother and daughter, farmer and 
farm hands, were all milking the cows. They 
courteously led me through the ancient gateway, 
a friendly place within, for not only did the cats 
run to meet us, but also the pigs. I ascended the 
outside steps of the fortified gateway into a room 
where was the Pryce coat of arms and the date 
1623 upon the walls. Then we went into the 
farmhouse through an old doorway that would 
be the joy of any antiquary who might behold 
it. Even this was fortified. Within, the oak 
panelling, the oak partitions, the seats around 
the walls, the deep, small-paned, narrow win- 
dows, the kitchen, the storeroom, the dairy, the 
mill — all were as they had been four hundred 
years ago — a little the worse for wear, but still 
staunch, still comely, still generous and hospit- 
able. One fireplace I stood before was twelve 
feet long and four or five feet deep. On the 
way home I saw a flock of lapwings in the 
meadow. I passed the chapel corner where 
the little fellow was ; I saw two rabbits rubbing 
noses in the field; and then, facing toward the 
sun, which was setting over Siabod and the 
Ogwen Valley, I followed home. 

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Cambrian Cottages 



These Welsh cottages and granges are like a 
well-made person or a well-made life : they have 
nothing to conceal. They reveal their construc- 
tion, and their beauty inheres in this revelation 
of what they really are. Instead of being all 
daubed over with plaster and smeared with un- 
attractive paper, their joists and beams, their 
panelled oak partitions, the ingle-heart of the 
house, the warm, brown oaken dressers and tri- 
darn, the grandfather clock and settles, the three- 
legged tables and three-legged chairs form a 
picture of simple harmony, which at its best it 
would be hard to rival either in dignity or 
homely beauty. I am not referring to the Welsh 
lodging-house which is all many an Englishman 
or American knows in Wales. The floor of the 
cottage may be but of beaten clay, neatly white- 
washed around the edge. This, however, is surely 
a more attractive floor covering than many which 
cost, even before they leave the carpet factory, 
a good deal more. Beautiful rooms are these 
where, from the lustre-ware, the pewter, the cop- 
per and brass and latticed windows, many a les- 
son is still to be learned by some of us who 
think it impossible that we should be able to 
take anything from so humble a place. In these 
[ H9 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



Welsh cottages life has continued more or less 
unchanged in a beautiful simplicity. It is not 
merely the simplicity imposed by poverty, — 
although that does exist to a depressing extent 
in Wales, — it is rather their sense of fitness, 
their love of what is beautiful, that innate in- 
stinct of theirs, not only for the right word, but 
also for the right beauty of a room, even of a 
kitchen. When they would imitate under the 
pressure of modern fussiness and vulgarities, 
something still holds them back. The lodging- 
house in Wales represents a concession to 
modernity, their mistaken and delicate tribute to 
the visitor. It is the Welsh farmhouse kitchen 
in all its dignity of use and beauty which re- 
presents the true life of the Cymri, the inerad- 
icable aesthetic fineness of Gwalia. In Wales, 
and at a time when the world pays it but 
scant respect, poetry dwells everywhere and is 
at home. The grimiest coal centre, the dustiest 
slate quarry eating into the very bowels of the 
earth and the skin of the people, cannot drive 
poetry and music away from Wales. They 
dwell by the doorway of the whitewashed cot- 
tage in that group of oaks, or under that shel- 
tering sycamore and the cottage roof of flower- 
[ 'SO] 



Cambrian Cotta 



'ges 



ing thatch, in the water-split stains of the slates 
upon the roofs, in the gleam of the doorsill over 
which one steps. Here in these Welsh cottages 
is simplicity as compelling, because more hu- 
man and not less unself-conscious, as that of the 
palace. 

Practically every characteristic possessed by 
the Welsh makes for love of home. Their very 
shyness drives them through the house door to 
the fireside, before all that is best can be revealed. 
Sensitive, full of feeling, gay and melancholy 
by turns, they are like their own hills, now 
sombre and now bright. It is temperament that 
makes the music of the Welsh cottage, its pic- 
turesqueness, its romance. Without the Cymric 
temperament there could have been no Welsh 
revivals, no invincible Lloyd George, no Eis- 
teddfodau. The delicacy of the woman, who is 
always the home-maker, inheres in the Celt. He 
feels the significance of the home with such 
yearning and such passion that it is almost in- 
comprehensible to his fellows of coarser fibre. 
It was that feminine love of home which made 
Celtic chivalry what it was. And I dare to say 
that it is still that element which makes the 
humble Welsh cottage what it is to-day. 

[ 151 ] 



Galla?it Litt/c JFalcs 



Those qualities which caused the Cyniri to 
reverence their bards and esteem learning are 
the qualities at work, in their lives now. The 
passionate admiration which in olden times 
made tluMU follow a loader like Llewelyn the 
Great or a lost cause, is what makes them shout 
by the tens ot' thousands tor Lloyd George to- 
day and a winning cause. Their low, quiet 
voices, their gentle ways, their spiritual intens- 
ity, all throw a glamour about the lives they 
lead. One does not expect to tind a sage in yon 
little cottage where the village bread is baked. 
Yet he is there, his books two deep on every 
shelf of his little room, his lamp burning far 
into the night. Nor does one expect to find a 
Welsh Jenny Lind in this cot whose brass door- 
sill we have just left: but, busy about her work, 
a voice the world might well run to listen to 
follows us down these Welsh upland meadows. 
And behind that counter, over which we buy 
sweets for the children, is an historian and anti- 
quary: in yon post-office a bard, — even the 
very farmer spends his leisure not as other farm- 
ers do: and nothing is as many, in their com- 
monplaceness, their German Gemeinbeity expect 
and demand that it shall be. 

[ >S^- ] 



Cambrian Cottages 



It is a far cry, some may think, from the 
"Mabinogion," one of the possessions of all the 
world, to a little Welsh cottage. No, it is not 
a far cry; it is a history, interrupted here and 
there by haunting words, broken by words not 
to be recovered, but still a history from those 
first (?) "cyttiau gwyddelod," with their rude 
music of harp and their tales read from a re- 
volving wooden book, down to this cot whose 
shelter we have sought in a valley or upland 
meadow, even as Wordsworth some one hun- 
dred years ago or Shelley sought such shelter at 
the base of Snowdon. It is a far cry, some may 
think, from that smoke curling out of the gable 
end of the hall in the " Dream of Rhonabwy '* 
to this ingle by which we have sat. No, it is a 
development, a continuance marked only by 
the steps of man's desire to strengthen and make 
more perfect his home here, forgetting that 
Chaucer has told us in his poem "Truth": 

" Her nis non horn, her nis but wildernesse : 
Forth, pilgrim, forth ! Forth, beste, out of thy stal ! " 

For the gray of a gray day outside, here by this 
hearth is the rose of fire, the tongue of flame by 
which we warm ourselves, the fluttering of those 

[ 153 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



dreams beneath which we hide ourselves as 
under a sheltering wing. The passionate heart 
of a passionately sensitive people is this hearth 
and flame of a Welsh cottage. To have lived 
by it is to have lost the need to hear those tonic 
words of Matthew Arnold, for here, indeed, the 
Celt may still, in his dreams, his love, his song, 
react against the despotism of fact. And outside 
is a world of magic, sometimes hostile but more 
often friendly, a world of beauty and of enchant- 
ment. From the "Dream of Rhonabwy," its 
women, its homes, its organized life, its beauty, 
down to the castle and cottage in Carnarvon or 
Conway, it is but one history, however many 
stages that history may have passed through; 
and until the traveller or the alien in Wales 
realizes this fact, he passes blindfold through its 
valleys and over its mountains and in and out 
of its cottage doors. 



IX 

Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

Old Time . . . gentlest among the Thralls 
Of Destiny, upon these wounds hath laid 
His lenient touches, soft as light that falls. 
From the wan Moon, upon the towers and walls, 
Light deepening the profoundest sleep of shade 

Wordsworth, '* Ruins of a Castle in North Wales." 

The more one lives in Wales the more one 
recognizes the need for nonconformity. The 
Established Church has frequently conformed 
too much, certainly to the bars found in all pub- 
lic inns, and probably to the "jorum" measure 
set by castle life and even by the abbey life that 
is now no more. No doubt, if there were less 
poverty, there might be less drinking; on the 
other hand, if there were less drinking, there 
would certainly be less poverty. Even now, as 
I write in the most respectable old inn in Den- 
bigh, — the place where all the gentry go, — 
for an inn sign I am looking out on three liquor 
kegs crossed one above another with a bunch 
of grapes pendant. 

But the hill on which this quaint, small, pro- 

■ C 155 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



sperous town of Denbigh is built does the best 
it can by its steepness to keep the people in 
good condition. In Welsh Denbigh Castle is 
called "Castell Caledfryn-yn-Rhos," the "Castle 
of the Craggy Hill in Rhos." From the " bot- 
tom," as the natives call the foot of the town 
and hill, — they are identical, — it is a sheer 
climb to the top where the castle is situated, 
and in that climb one has traversed the entire 
village. Close by the castle is the Church of 
St. Hilary, more or less falling to pieces now, 
where once masses were said for the soul of 
Henry de Lacy. Within the castle enclosure, in 
a tiny cottage, John Henry Rowlands, or Stan- 
ley, the African explorer, was born. Very eager 
is Denbigh to claim this distinguished man, and 
but little can you get them to say about the 
brutal treatment which drove him away from 
home and made him a wanderer upon the face 
of the earth. Denbigh claims Twm o'r Nant 
also, — he is buried at the bottom of the town 
in Whitchurch, — but not content with claim- 
ing him, they canonize him with the absurd 
name of "Welsh Shakespeare." Born in 1739, 
he developed, without any educational advant- 
ages whatsoever, remarkable skill in the writ- 

[ 156] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

ing of interludes, which for many years he him- 
self played up and down the country, and by 
which, because he championed the cause of the 
people " against the evils of the day," he got 
the ear of his popular audiences. Denbigh claims 
Dr. Samuel Johnson, too, and exaggerates his 
brief visit to Middleton at Gwaenynog. They 
have even photographed one cottage and called 
it Johnson's. 

A few miles west from Denbigh, at Rhudd- 
lan, they have made the most of their history, 
but it is not recent ; rather it is standardized and 
dignified by an antiquity which antedates even 
the ivy-covered ruins of the castle. There star- 
lings flutter in and out, — perhaps a descendant 
of that starling which Branwen had taught to 
speak and who carried across the sea to Carnar- 
von, to her brother, Bendigeid Vran, the tale of 
her sufferings. There, too, are the fireplaces of an 
ample hospitality which is no more. I thought 
of the promise Edward had made in Rhuddlan 
that he would give the people a prince born 
in Wales and who could speak no English. I 
thought of that battle between Saxon and Welsh, 
in 769, on Morfa (marsh) Rhuddlan, which, be- 
fore our eyes, stretched gently and mysteriously 

[ 157] 



Gallant Little Wales 



away to the sea, and of the song that had 
commemorated it and of the defeat of the 
Cymru : — 

" Calm the sun sets o'er the hills of Carnarvon, 
Deep fall the shadows on valley and lea, 
Scarce a breath ripples the breast of old ocean, 
Faint on the ear falls the roll of the sea." 

Also in the old song is heard again the din of 
weapons, the hissing of arrows, and the cries of 
those who fought and those who fell. Even in its 
English translation it is still a stirring old song. 
On the coast, a few miles north of Rhuddlan, 
is one of the most famous castles in British his- 
tory, Flint Castle ; but a dolorous, sorrowful old 
place it is now, set down in the midst of belch- 
ing smokestacks and a sooty modern life that 
cares nothing for it. At Flint the dismantling 
of Richard II was performed. Froissart, the 
chronicler, speaking of Richard's departure from 
Flint Castle in the custody of the Duke of Lan- 
caster, tells us a strange story. King Richard 
had a beautiful greyhound who loved him be- 
yond measure. As the Duke and the King were 
conversing in the court of the castle, the grey- 
hound was loosed and immediately ran to the 

[ 158] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

Duke, paying him all the attentions he had al- 
ways given to the King. The Duke asked what 
was the meaning of this fondness. "Cousin," 
replied the King, " it means a great deal for you 
and very little for me." 

Above Flint, on the River Dee, is Hawarden 
Castle, the new residence and the old ruin made 
famous to us in recent years by the fact that 
William Ewart Gladstone lived there. And there, 
centuries ago, Llewelyn, the great Welsh prince, 
first saw his Eleanor. The people in this vicin- 
ity are called " Harden Jews." In this connec- 
tion an interesting story from legendary history 
is told. It was in the year 946 that Cynan ap 
Ellis ap Anarawd was king of North Wales and 
a Christian church stood there. In this church 
was a roodloft surmounted by a figure of the 
Virgin bearing a holy cross in her hands. The 
summer had been hot and dry and the people 
began to pray for rain. Lady Trawst, wife of 
Sy tsylt, governor of the castle, was one of those 
who prayed most often to the image. One day 
while she was on her knees the cross fell and 
killed her. The weather continued hot and the 
indignant people decided to bring the rood to 
trial for the murder of Lady Trawst. This was 
[ 159] 



Gallant Little Wales 



done and the Virgin and cross sentenced to be 
hanged, but Spar of Mancot, one of the jury, 
thought drowning would be better. Finally the 
judgment was partially amended and the image 
was laid upon the beach and the tide did the 
rest. It was carried up to the walls of Chester, 
and the citizens of that town, ancient even in 
946, reverently took it up and buried it, setting 
above it a monument with this inscription upon 
it: — 

" The Jews their God did crucify, 
The Hardeners theirs did drown, 
Because their wants she 'd not supply. 
And lies under this cold stone." 

And from this time forth the river, which had 
been called the Usk, was called Rood Die or 
Dee. 

It is not possible to re-create that olden castle 
life in Wales. A fragment here and a fragment 
there one finds, and when the broken life has 
been put together again, as in the " Mabinogion," 
the Norman influence is more than a varnish to 
its ancient surface, — it is often colour, with 
occasionally an entirely new figure painted in. 
Glimpses of the palace life do we get, of the 

[ 160] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

sleeping-rooms and halls and chambers, of beau- 
tiful buildings, of youths and pages, of vestures 
of silk and gold and yellow robes of shining 
satin. Pictures of maidens, too, there are, who 
live for us still as if they had not vanished from 
within walls which Time has partially destroyed. 
One maiden there was who was made from the 
blossoms of the oak and of the broom and of 
the yellow meadow sweet, and whom they called 
Blodeuwedd or Flower-face. Another, not Blod- 
wen, but Olwen, she* who was clothed in a " robe 
of flame-coloured silk . . . more yellow was her 
head than the flower of the broom, and her skin 
was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer 
were her hands and her fingers than the blos- 
soms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of 
the meadow fountain. . . . Four white trefoils 
sprung up wherever she trod. And therefore was 
she called Olwen." Pictures, too, there are in 
the "Mabinogion" and elsewhere of the castles 
in which these maidens embroidered, sitting in 
golden chairs and clad in yellow satin. One de- 
scription there is in "The Lady of the Fountain," 
which is a vivid picture of a Welsh castle : 
" And at length it chanced that I came to the 
fairest valley in the world, wherein were trees of 
[ i6i ] 



Gallant Liiile Wales 



equal growth ; and a river ran through the val- 
ley, and a path was by the side of the river. And 
I followed the path until midday, and I continued 
my journey along the remainder of the valley 
until the evening : and at the extremity of a 
plain I came to a large and lustrous castle, at the 
foot of which was a torrent." The fair valley, the 
path by the riverside, the lustrous castle, the tor- 
rent — all are still a part of the life of Wales to- 
day. Again, for the mere opening of a book, we 
may see knights in their encounters as of old : 
the horse that pricks forward, the furious blows 
upon the faces of the shields, the broken armour 
and bursting girths, and then the battle on foot, 
their arms striking sparks, and blood and sweat 
filling their eyes. Nowhere in all literature is 
there a more beautiful picture of a horse than in 
Kilhwch and Olwen : " And the youth pricked 
forth upon a steed with head dappled gray, of 
four winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed 
hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, 
and upon him a saddle of costly gold. And in 
the youth's hand were two spears of silver, sharp, 
well-tempered, headed with steel, three ells in 
length, of an edge to wound the wind, and cause 
blood to flow, and swifter than the fall of the 

[ 162] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the 
earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest. A 
gold-hilted sword was upon his thigh, the blade of 
which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of 
the hue of the lightning of heaven ; his war-horn 
was of ivory. Before him were two brindled, 
white-breasted greyhounds, having strong collars 
of rubies about their necks, reaching from the 
shoulder to the ear. And the one that was on 
the left side bounded across to the right side, 
and the one on the right to the left, and like 
two sea-swallows sported around him. And his 
courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs, 
like four swallows in the air, about his head, 
now above, now below. About him was a four- 
cornered cloth of purple, and an apple of gold 
was at each corner, and every one of the apples 
was of the value of an hundred kine. And there 
was precious gold of the value of three hundred 
kine upon his shoes, and upon his stirrups, from 
his knee to the tip of his toe. And the blade of 
grass bent not beneath him, so light was his 
courser's tread as he journeyed towards the gate 
of Arthur's Palace." 

Charming pictures of friendship there are, too, 
lived within castle and abbey ; and descriptions 

[ 163 ] 



Gallant Little Wales 



of the love of birds and journeys taken upon 
sea and land; and harsh and barbaric touches to 
remind us of a past still more ancient and of a 
cruelty still more primitive. Possible flashes do 
we get of the humour of this olden life : the re- 
freshing gentleman in Branwen, the daughter of 
Llyr, whom no house could ever contain ; Ben- 
digeid Vran, the brother of Branwen, that good 
brother who sat upon the rock of Harlech look- 
ing over the sea, and all unconsciously welcom- 
ing those who were to break the heart of the 
sister he loved. Poetry and wisdom also there 
are in this ancient life : the Coranians, who, how- 
ever low words might be spoken, if the wind 
met that speech, it was made known to them; 
and Arthur granting a boon in words which are 
a poem in themselves, — " as far as the wind 
dries, and the rain moistens, and the sun re- 
volves, and the sea encircles, and the earth ex- 
tends." "There is no remedy for that which is 
past, be it as it may," said Luned. And in the 
" Mabinogion," as in every life, there was one 
door which when those who were bearing the 
head of Bendigeid Vran to London opened and 
looked through, " they were as conscious of all 
the evils they had ever sustained, and of all the 

[ 164] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

friends and companions they had lost, and of all 
the misery that had befallen them, as if it had 
all happened in that very spot." 

South from Flint and south from Hawarden, 
yet near the windings of the river Dee, is Castle 
Dinas Bran, "Crow Castle," as the English call 
it, mistakenly turning "Bran," a word whose 
actual meaning is unknown, into " Crow." 
Scarcely a stone of this very famous and ancient 
old castle situated on a high hill is left intact. 
The very rubble of its walls is exposed. Of the 
castle there is not enough left to repay any one 
for a visit, except a lover of desolation. Here, in 
another land, are walls like those of Balclutha, and 
desolate are they. Here the fox looks out of the 
window and the rank grass waves about its head, 
and here on the wind the song of mourning lifts 
itself bewailing the days that are gone. Yet from 
the valley below, with its quaint old town of 
Llangollen, its wonderful Abbey of Valle Crucis, 
and the shimmering of the running waters of 
the river Dee, the present is a reassuring one. 
Smoke curls up cheerfully from scores of house- 
hold chimneys. The sun shines down upon the 
abbey walls, upon the chapter house, still intact, 
and upon the broken walls of the church itself 

C 165] 



Gallant Little Wales 



" Ivy'd Valle Crucis ; time decayM 
Dim on the brink of Deva's wandering floods, 
Your ivy*d arch glittermg through the tangled shade, 
Your gray hills towering o'er your night of woods ; 
Deep in the vale recesses as you stand, 
And, desolately great.'* 

Inseparable from and a part of the spiritual beauty 
of this scene is the thought of the old blind rec- 
tor, who is now custodian of the abbey and who 
still speaks lovingly of the beauty of the things 
he can no longer see. He has been there twenty- 
nine years, and through many of those years he 
has been going blind. Yet he told us cheerfully 
that he was greatly encouraged by our interest. 
" I never destroy anything that is old," he said ; 
" I stick to the old." As we stood there talking, 
the lovely little white English daisies looking 
up from the grass at us, the venerable old man 
told us something of his work. He was much 
discouraged because people were not interested, 
and even as he leaned on his stick, doubtless 
hoping for other visitors, his ear-sight quickened 
by the eye-sight he had lost, people were pass- 
ing by outside walking toward the Pillar of 
Eliseg and a wooded vale beyond. 

In Llangollen, the village near the abbey, lived 
C i66] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

and died the ladies of Llangollen, two dear, 
quaint, sentimental souls, with personalities suf- 
ficiently marked and fearless so that they were 
unafraid to be themselves. Louisa Costello, in 
her account of a Welsh tour, gives them rather 
sharp treatment. She says that they were foolish, 
condescending, proud, vain, and pompous, yet 
she admits that they were charitable and con- 
siderate of their neighbours. Of their friendship 
she has nothing good to say. In a word, they 
were a couple of eccentric sentimentalists and 
both frightfully ugly. With the larger charity 
of the man, Wordsworth, who paid them a visit 
and wrote them a sonnet, described their ap- 
pearance in the following words, " So oddly was 
one of these ladies attired that we took her, at a 
little distance, for a Roman Catholic priest, with 
a crucifix and relics hung at his neck. They 
were without caps, their hair, bushy and white 
as snow, which contributed to the mistake." In 
the sonnet addressed to them there are, among 
others, two lines of pure tribute : — 

"The Vale of Friendship, let this spot 
Be named ; there, faithful to a low roofed Cot, 
On Deva's banks, ye have abode so long; 

[ 167] 



Gallant Little JVales 



Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb, 

Even on this earth, above the reach of Time.'* 

Lady Eleanor Butler was the daughter of the 
Earl of Ormond. She was bom in DubHn and 
was both wealthy and beautiful. The Honourable 
Miss Ponsonby, a member of an ancient family, 
was an early friend of Lady Eleanor. She, too, 
was born in Dublin, and both lost their parents 
at the same time. They loved independence and 
did not love their suitors. Many things drew 
them together and, as Wordsworth aptly phrases 
it, they retired into notice in the Vale of Llan- 
gollen. Now they lie buried there, their faithful 
servant, Mrs. Mary Carryll, lying in an equal 
grave beside them. 

In this neighbourhood are many castles, 
among them Chirk the property of Lord How- 
ard de Walden, and Ruthin Castle which is not 
very interesting. About northwest from Llan- 
gollen lies the old town of Conway, with its cas- 
tle and its rare old Plas Mawr. Suetonius says 
that the chief motive assigned by the Romans 
for the invasion of Britain was that they might 
obtain possession of the Conway pearl fisheries. 
One of the Conway pearls, now no longer much 
thought of, was placed in the regal crown and 
C i68 ] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

presented by Sir R. Wynne to Richard II. The 
picturesqueness of Conway streets is greater than 
that of any other North Walian town. Little 
gable ends look out and down upon the streets 
like curious eyes. The houses are irregular and 
there are odd turns and twistings of the streets ; 
cobblestones and old flagstones and an occa- 
sional black-and-white house; and everywhere 
glimpses through castle gate or over castle wall. 
The exterior of the castle is still singularly per- 
fect ; only one part of it seems to be falling, that 
nearest the river and looking out upon the sea. 
Overlooking the town, upon the river, is Queen 
Eleanor's oratory : — 

" In her oryall then she was 

Closyd well with royall glas : 

Fulfullyd it was with ymagery, 

Every windowe by and by, 

On each side had ther a gynne 

Sperde with manie a dyvers pynne." 

It matters not now whether this was a place of 
prayer or place in which the Queen arrayed her- 
self Pennant, when he made his famous " Tour 
in Wales," described Conway as castle of match- 
less magnificence, and a matchlessly magnificent 
Castle it still is. 

[ 169] 



Gallant Liiile Wales 



It takes but a single effort of the imagination 
to see again the life within that ancient harp- 
shaped town as it must have been even so re- 
cently as seventy-five years ago: the varying 
colours of the peasants' dresses, their large mar- 
ket-baskets and umbrellas, their bright handker- 
chiefs, the tall North Walian beaver hats and 
frilled caps peeping out beneath, the bright 
cheeks and even brighter pink cotton jackets 
worn by the girls. Healthy, well-made peasants 
those, neat of garb and gay of heart, good-look- 
ing, both men and women. Again the old mar- 
ket-place, beyond Plas Mawr and the church, 
rings with their laughter and their lively barter, 
and the clatter of their ponies' hoofs; again the 
soft voices of the women are heard and the 
heavier voices of the men; again they mount 
their horses, sometimes double, and ride away 
out of the lively town to the silent hills beyond, 
through Gyffin, where the colours in the old bar- 
rel vault of the church must have been even 
brighter than they are now; perhaps they go as 
far as some hillside like that on which Llange- 
lynin still keeps its gray sanctuary. Again down 
upon the old town settles a double silence. The 
day's work is done ; twilight has come, and over 

[ 170 ] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

all reigns a stillness which is as that of a Welsh 
Sabbath. 

Through the Vale of Conway, past Trevriw 
and Llanrwst with its Gwyder Castle, past beau- 
tiful Bettws-y-Coed and Capel Curig, and on 
to the Pass of Llanberis, a walk of unrivalled 
beauty, there appears at last, as one travels down 
to Pen-y-Pass (the head of the pass), the single 
tower of the ruined castle of Dolbadarn. A 
Welsh triad says there are three primary requis- 
ites for poetry: an eye that can see nature, a 
heart that can feel nature, and a resolution that 
dares follow nature. No one can come down from 
this road over the towering summits of Snow- 
don to the little green valley in which Dolba- 
darn lies without, for the time, becoming a 
poet, even to the resolution that dares follow 
the spiritual counsels which come from sky and 
mountain and rushing stream and the very rocks 
that fill this valley. "Nature has here," says 
Camden, "reared huge groups of mountains, as 
if she intended to bind the island fast to the 
bowels of the earth, and make a safe retreat for 
Britons in the time of war. For here are so 
many crags and rocks, so many wooded valleys, 
rendered impassable by so many lakes, that the 

[ 171 ] 



Gallant hittle Wales 



lightest troops, much less an army, could never 
find their way among them. These mountains 
may be truly called the British Alps; for, be- 
sides that they are the highest in the whole 
island, they are, like the Alps, bespread with 
broken crags on every side, all surrounding one 
which, towering in the centre, far above the 
rest, lifts its head so loftily, as if it meant not 
only to threaten, but to thrust it into the sky." 
The better one comes to know the castles of 
North Wales, the more is one impressed with 
the extraordinary ability shown in fortifying 
every access into the country. Dolbadarn itself 
is ancient ; whether it dates from before or after 
the Roman Conquest is doubtful; it was with 
the thought of Llanberis Pass in mind that Ten- 
nyson wrote his "Golden Year"; it was there 
that he heard 

" the great echo flap 
And buffet round the hill from bluff to bluff." 

Here in this castle Owen Goch was imprisoned 
by his brother Llewelyn. To this prisoner a 
bard, Howel Voel ap Griffi ap Pwyll Gwyddel, 
composed his Welsh awdl, or ode, called " The 
Captive of Dolbadarn." The feeling in this 

[ 172 ] 



Castles and Abbeys in North Wales 

poem is still quick even after all the changes of 
the centuries and even with all the loss from 
translation: — 

" His palace gates no more unclose, 

No harp is heard within his hall, 

His friends are vassals to his foes, 

Grief and despair have vanquished all. 
He, the defender, — he, the good and just, — 
Is gone ; his name, his honour, in the dust ! 

" He prized but treasures to bestow. 
He cherish'd state but to be free; 
None from his walls unsped might go, 
To all he gave, but most to me ! 

" Ruddy his cheeks as morning's light. 
His ready lance was firm and bright, 
The crimson stains that on it glow 
Tell of the Saxon's overthrow. 

"Shame, that a prince like this should lie 
An outcast, in captivity. 
And oh ! what years of ceaseless shame. 
Should cloud the Lord of Snowdon's name!" 

Professor O. M. Edwards, in his book called 
" Wales," describes Dolbadarn as the last home 
of Welsh independence. 

[ 173 ] 



Gallant L,ittle Wales 



Hundreds of years before the sad, peace-lov- 
ing life of Llewelyn had played its great part in 
Welsh history, in the valley that runs from the 
head of the pass along the low margin of beau- 
tiful Gwynant Lake, by a little river that talks 
gayly in all weathers but most gayly in the 
stormiest, past Llyn (lake) Dinas to Beddgelert, 
— in this valley is situated on Dinas Emrys 
some fragments and traces of one of the oldest 
and most important strongholds in Great Brit- 
ain. This was the fort of Merlin who " called 
up spirits from the vasty deep." There is melan- 
choly and romantic interest to be found on the 
summit of Dinas Emrys, tracing what still re- 
mains. Something there is, perhaps enough for 
the archaeologist to re-create all that has been 
lost. On this same road, some thirteen miles 
beyond, lies Carnarvon Castle, of whose history 
and beauty I have written in " The City of the 
Prince of Wales." 

In the "Mabinogion" there are wild-wood 
touches showing aspects of the life the Cymru 
had lived. The redactor of the old story of Bran- 
wen says : " Then they went on to Harlech . . . 
and there came three birds and began singing 
unto them a certain song, and all the songs 

[ 174] 



Castles and Abbeys in North IFales 

they had ever heard were unpleasant compared 
thereto ; and the birds seemed to them to be at 
a great distance from them over the sea, yet they 
appeared as distinct as if they were close by." 
And again, " In Harlech you will be feasting 
seven years, the birds of Rhiannon singing unto 
you the while." Just as the "Dream of Maxen 
Wledig " is in a sense the story of Carnarvon 
Castle, so is this tale of Branwen, the " fair- 
bosomed," full of pictures and suggestions of 
Harlech Castle, Bendigeid Vran (the blessed) 
sitting on a rock and looking out to sea, — 
across that enchanted bay, on the other side of 
which lies Criccieth Castle, while the King of 
Ireland, Matholwch, his ships flying pennants 
of satin, comes wooing the sister of Branwen. A 
strange story this which has come out of that 
old castle stronghold, its royal Irish lover, its 
good Bendigeid Vran, its beautiful Branwen, 
the tame starlings and the singing-birds of Rhi- 
annon, and that cry of Branwen, "Alas, woe is 
me that I was ever born " ; and after that cry, 
the heart that broke and was buried in the four- 
sided grave on the banks of the Alaw. 

Harlech Castle was probably originally built 
about the middle of the sixth century by a Brit- 

[ 175] 



Gallant Little Wales 



ish prince. Edward I constructed the present 
castle on the ruins of the former one. It was 
finished in the thirteenth century and became 
the seat of many conflicts between Owen 
Glendwr and the English. Thither heroic Mar- 
garet of Anjou fled, following the battle of 
Northampton. It was the last of the castles to 
hold out for Charles. The whole life of this 
stronghold has been heroic, stupendous in size, 
gallant in its human figures, impressive in its 
human sorrows, indomitable in its human cour- 
age. Here, and in the other castles of North 
Wales, many of those strange prophecies of 
Taliessin have been fulfilled or in part fulfilled, 
something at least of 

" All the angels' words 
As to peace and war." 



THE END 



Appendix 



APPENDIX 

Suggestions for Some Tours ' 

At the junction of the Llugwy and Conway val- 
leys, embowered in trees, cut by rushing streams, sur- 
rounded by mountains, among them Siabod, the Gly- 
ders, and some of the lesser hills of Snowdonia, is 
Bettws-y-Coed, one of the most beautiful and, be it 
said, the most comfortable villages in all North Wales. 
There are good inns, good lodgings, excellent train- 
service, coaches, — all that mankind in a holiday hu- 
mour can desire. This little " chapel m the woods " 
is a place rich in beautiful legend, near the sea, in the 
midst of mountains, for the sportsman blessed with 
good fishing and good hunting. Artists go there, and 
where artists go, others can afford to follow. The 
Lledr Valley, which meets the Conway just outside 
of Bettws, Ruskin called the most beautiful valley in 
the world. At Bettws-y-Coed, I think, are as fine 
headquarters as any in North Wales for a series of 
tours. The Waterloo Hotel, the Royal Oak, the 
Gwydir are all good hotels, well run, sanitary, and 
with excellent food. In Bettws, too, there is a first- 

* Buy anywhere you happen to be in Wales, The Gossip- 
ing Guide to Wales ; its maps, big and small, and its text 
answer all questions. Price, one shilling. 

[ 179 ] 



Appendix 



rate garage from which you can get good cars at any 
time. 

Repeated experience of life in North Wales in its 
most isolated, tiny hamlets, where the tourist had never 
been before and where it was impossible to secure 
lodging ; experience in the small towns like Conway 
and Carnarvon, full of association, quiet and yet pro- 
sperous ; and experience in the larger centres of Welsh 
life, have given me a perspective which is, perhaps, 
uncommon. The great advantage of Bettws is that 
you can not only get everywhere from that delightful 
place, but that you can also be most comfortable at a 
reasonable rate. 

If you are touring in an automobile you will find 
each one of the tours which I suggest food merely for 
a day of comfortable delight. If you are walking, or 
driving, these tours can be broken up and shortened 
or extended indefinitely. 

For the First Day go up the Vale of Conway, 
stopping at Trefriw. On your way to Trefriw, you 
will pass through Llanrwst, which, dear old market- 
town that it is, will for liveliness on a market-day 
suggest Piccadilly rather than a little Welsh town. 
There from miles around — and if you wish to see a 
Welsh market you cannot do better than to go to 
Llanrwst, for during centuries it has had a great repu- 
tation as a place of barter — there from miles around, 
the Welsh peasants gather, and there you will see 
[ i8o] 



Appendix 



Welsh household articles which you could not find in 
any shop. There is much in Llanrwst worth taking 
a glimpse at, the old bridge built by Inigo Jones 
which would be enough to send a well-regulated motor 
car to the madhouse, but from the artist point of view 
is still useful ; the little cottage by the bridge, Gwydir 
Castle just beyond the cottage, not a tumble-down 
castle either, but resplendent with gorgeously carved 
furniture and Spanish-leather-covered walls and relics 
too many and too old to enumerate. 

But on to Trefriw and from Trefriw climb the 
hill on foot, — it is only a short hill, — to see Llan- 
rhychwyn Church, a double-aisled church of the most 
primitive simplicity, where Prince Llewelyn used in 
tumultuous days to worship. One aisle is consider- 
ably older than the other, dating, as its architecture, 
the details of its rafters, the windows and doors show, 
perhaps back as far as the eighth century, surely the 
ninth. And now to Conway, stopping by the way at 
Caerhun for just a glimpse of the old church there and 
a long enough time to realize that you are standing on 
the foundations of what was once the ancient Roman 
city of Canovium. Do not stay there so long that you 
will not have time to turn on a road just about a mile 
and a half outside of Conway that leads up the hill to 
Llangelynin Church, also one of the oldest founda- 
tions in all Great Britain, a poor, stricken, old place 
tended by a woman scarcely strong enough to creep 
around, apart from any village or any cottages, remote, 
[ i8i ] 



Appendix 



pathetic in its semi-decay, and containing still the old 
pulpit, some of the old glass, and a leper's window 
through which lepers used in the Middle Ages to re- 
ceive the sacrament and to listen to the services. 

And now you are almost within the harp-shaped 
castle walls of Conway itself — old Conway with its 
cobbled streets, its beautiful Plas Mawr, its ancient 
hostelries, its massive castle with the oratory of Queen 
Eleanor still looking out upon the sea, and — treasure 
not to be despised — near the castle the tiniest cottage 
in all Great Britain. There are good hotels in Con- 
way where an excellent luncheon or dinner may be 
found, and if there is time for sight-seeing, perhaps 
the best thing to do would be to buy one of Abel 
Heywood's penny guides, for in these penny guides is 
found a wealth of reliable information. Enough, this, 
for one day's joy, and I have discovered for you what 
no guide-book would do — two, and perhaps three, of 
the sweetest old churches of primitive Wales. 

Leaving Bettws-y-Coed on the Second Day, you 
will go through Capel Curig, stopping on the way for 
a glimpse of the Swallow Falls. Now, down through 
the valley past Llyn Ogwen, from which you can 
visit, if you wish, the Devil's Kitchen or Twll Ddu, 
the " black hole," as the Welsh call it, where, every 
year, foolish young collegians lose their lives in scal- 
ing the walls. In its lack of verdure, in its stupendous 
rocky mountain summits, in its gigantic boulders of 

[ 182 ] 



Appendix 



stone thrown hither and yon, this valley is a veritable 
valley of the shadow of death, gray, desolate, rock- 
strewn. You will pass through Bethesda on your way 
to Bangor, seeing, as you go along, hillsides covered 
with rubbish from slate quarries. And now to Bangor, 
where Dr. Samuel Johnson over one hundred years 
ago found the inn, together with a great deal else in 
Wales, " very mean.'* Although the good Doctor was 
tremendously interested in his food, despite the very 
meanness of the inns, he found Bangor, its Beaumaris 
Castle, and its cathedral, interesting. But they have 
changed the " meanness " of their inns now, for this 
Welsh town has become a university town and you 
will find good food and good inns. 

Only a few miles beyond is Carnarvon, — that old 
town which North Walians claim as the most inter- 
esting of all their towns, — and Carnarvon Castle, in 
the words of Pennant, " the most magnificent badge of 
our subjection to the English." There in Carnarvon 
the investitures of the Princes of Wales have taken 
place. Carnarvon Castle is, with the exception of 
Alnwick, the finest of all Great Britain and possessed 
of the romantic grace — its casements looking out upon 
the sea and the dim romantic shores of Anglesey and 
its towers back upon the rocky sides of Snowdon — 
of any European castle. Within the walls of this 
castle, begun by Edward I and completed by his son, 
the first English Prince of Wales, and within the walls 
of the town, — for Carnarvon is a city of the early 

[ 183 ] 



Appendix 



Middle Ages founded upon the ancient city of the 
Romans called Segontium, — many hours, even days, 
might be spent. 

Homewards now to Bettws through Llanberis, up 
the long, beautifully graded road to Pen-y-Pass (which 
means simply the head of the pass), where you will 
find an inn for mountaineers in whose attractive dining- 
room you can have delicious tea and a view unrivalled 
in all North Wales. From Pen-y-Pass one of the easiest 
ascents of Snowdon can be made, and, with Bettws as 
a centre, it would be a very simple thing to run down 
to Pen-y-Pass for an ascent. You are within a few 
miles of Bettws now and will reach there in time for 
supper or dinner at seven o'clock. 

On the Third Day go through Capel Curig again, 
turning at Pen-y-Gwryd, — where Charles Kingsley, 
the novelist, and Tom Hood spent so many happy 
days and where there is an excellent inn, — to go to 
Beddgelert. You will run down one of the most beauti- 
ful roads in Great Britain, wide, smooth, with all Snow- 
don ia at your right-hand side, and on the left, moun- 
tains that roll away towards the jagged summit of 
Cynicht; down past beautiful Lake Gwynant; past 
beautiful country places; past Dinas Lake where a 
remarkable creature of mythological times is supposed 
to have lived — fairy tale seems to have made a sort of 
crocodile out of what was probably a beaver ; — past 
Dinas Emrys, on which there are still remains of a 

[ 184] 



Appendix 



Roman stronghold and where the magician Merlin 
Ambrosius worked many a spell and Arthur has often 
been ; still on, past Aran, a mountain only less high 
than Snowdon, from whose side leaps a little water- 
fall ; along a road with a turbulent Welsh river on one 
side and fawn-like, mottled beach trees on the other; 
now on to the outskirts of the village, where one be- 
gins to see signboards announcing lodgings, and finally, 
into the village of Beddgelert, set sheltered and sur- 
rounded in its cup of mountains, and where, if you 
have a heart for legend, you may see a dog*s grave 
and believe the beautiful old tale ; and where, if you 
have an eye for beauty, you may have your eyes filled 
— eat your cake, indeed, and take some of it away 
with you ; — and where, if you have a mind to rest, 
you may stay on indefinitely, finding each day more 
peaceful and more lovely than the last in that little 
mountain-cupped village, with the sound of its running 
rivers and its tumbling mountain streams and the day- 
long cawing of its rooks. If you want a welcome from 
some one who loves Americans and who will do all 
that she can for them, you could not do better than 
go to Mrs. Howell Griffith Powell, who will give you 
excellent simple food and, if it is a cold day or you 
happen merely to want it as an added pleasure, an 
open fire. There are good hotels there, too, the Royal 
Goat Hotel and the Prince Llewelyn. 

Then in the afternoon you will go on down through 
Aberglaslyn Pass. Perhaps you will stand on the old 

[ i8s] 



Appendix 



bridge for a few minutes and read or listen to the story 
of how the Devil — always a singularly active figure in 
Wales and the Welsh imagination — tried to get an 
unjust toll for the building of that bridge and was out- 
witted. The Welsh mind — and the revival is a point 
in proof — takes a singular delight in outwitting the 
Devil. Now, on to Tremadoc, where on the right- 
hand side of the road you will see the house in which 
Shelley, the poet, lived for a year with poor unhappy 
Harriet. From Portmadoc you can take a short detour 
to Harlech and its castle, a tremendous old pile of a 
fortress, scarcely beautiful, but very impressive as it 
stands upon its vast rock looking out over the sea and 
the mountains, and down over the little cottages shel- 
tered at its foot. As you look across the sea, you are 
gazing upon the land where King Mark is supposed 
to have had his palace and upon Criccieth, where you 
may still see an old stub of a castle. Perhaps you will 
be even more interested to know that Lloyd George 
has his summer home in Criccieth, and that not far 
from Harlech, Bernard Shaw has spent a good deal of 
his time preparing his next delightfully wicked laugh 
at the expense of himself and mankind. Just opposite 
Harlech Castle is a good inn where one can get an 
ample dinner or luncheon or tea ; and a car or one's 
walking-traps may be left. 

Retracing a few miles from Harlech, follow the 
road through the beautiful Vale of Maentwrog. It was 
in the Vale of Maentwrog that Lord Lyttleton said, 
[ i86 ] 



Appendix 



" One might with the woman one loves pass an age 
in this vale and think it but a day." Up through this 
wonderful vale you will see a tiny narrow-gauge rail- 
way making its way. Sharp is the contrast between 
the country at Festiniog, from which one looks down 
upon the Vale of Maentwrog, and the country about 
Blaenau Festiniog, which is the next town beyond. 
Blaenau Festiniog — high up on the mountain side, 
with the peaks of gray rock summits towering high 
above the village and rocks everywhere coming down 
to the backs of the houses, miles of slate rubbish within 
sight of every street in the village — has for its proud 
boast the fact that it contains the largest slate quar- 
ries in the world. Here are quarried the beautiful 
blue slates of which Wales is proud, and which, alas, 
the cheaper French slates have been driving out of 
the market. It is well worth the trouble to climb the 
quarry steps up the Oakeley Quarry. Then on through 
the Lledr Valley, with every turn of the road near the 
Lledr River, through plantations of pines, past little 
houses, down this beautifully graded road until the 
Lledr River joins the Conway, past the Fairy Glen, 
and so home once more to Bettws. 

A Fourth Day should be spent in a more fertile 
part of the country following the Cerrig-y-Druidion 
road through to Corwen. A few miles farther on, 
along the river Dee, one comes to Llangollen, a sweet 
old town, where lived those two dear, high-spirited, 

C 187] 



Appendix 



quaint old ladies of Llangollen ; where there are ex- 
cellent inns in a fertile valley, good shops, a town 
Welsh to its linger tips, and an old abbey called Valle 
Crucis. One hears so much of Tintern Abbey on its 
southern English river, yet there is something about 
Valle Crucis which I think is no less lovely. More of 
a ruin it is, and in some ways more of a treasure. On 
the whole, it has fallen into greater dilapidation, but 
there are parts of it from which one can read much 
of a life that is past. There is a charming old chapter 
house almost intact ; a delightful old fishpond from 
which the monks, who had an eye for what was good 
to eat, took their carp ; and there are such graceful 
Norman chimneys and fireplaces as I do not remem- 
ber having seen any place else ; and there, too, the old 
blind rector shows one the things which he cannot 
see any more, saying over and over as he guides one 
around, "I never destroy anything that is old." The 
restoration of this abbey is his work, his life, and be- 
fore his sight went he had put into print such records 
of its past life that he had identified himself with its 
history for all time to come. Americans he loves, too, 
and you will give as well as get pleasure. 

In conclusion, a few general suggestions. You 
would find it amply worth your while to motor over 
to Bala, or, if you are not motoring, to take the train 
over there. The lake is beautiful, accommodations 
are good, and one can, from Bala as a centre, make 
[ i88 ] 



Appendix 



several short and most interesting trips : — one to 
Dolgelly, where Tennyson spent so many of his vaca- 
tions ; another up to the quaint little town of Ruthin 
in which Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale) 
spent some little time and of which Mrs. Piozzi tells 
the charming story which I have repeated elsewhere. 
She was discussing with the caretaker of one of the 
little churches in the possession of the Thrale family 
her plans for her journey and mentioned that she was 
going to Ruthin. " Ruthin, mum," he said, "my wife 
came from Ruthin, and when she died I made up my 
mind I M go with the body to Ruthin, for I thought 
I would find it a pleasant journey, and indeed, mum, 
I found it a very pleasant journey." 



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